GIFT  OF 

-— ^j- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS 


Jesus  and  Politics 

An  Essay 
Towards  an  Ideal 


By 
Harold  B.  Shepheard,  M.A. 

With  Introduction  by 
Vida  D.  Scudder 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 
68 1  FIFTH  AVENUE 


Copyright,  1915 
BY  E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


INTRODUCTION 

In  the  crisis  through  which  the 
civilised  world  is  passing,  the  mere 
title  of  this  book  arrests  sad  atten- 
tion :  for  it  would  seem  as  if  Jesus 
had  singularly  little  to  do  with  poli- 
tics in  this  year  of  His  grace  1915. 
Nor  are  people  lacking, — the  au- 
thor of  this  book  would  surely  be 
among  them, — to  believe  solemnly 
that  the  absence  of  effort  to  square 
the  practice  of  nations  with  the  law 
of  Christ  is  responsible  for  the  fail- 
ure of  our  gracious  formulae,  our 
self-confidence,  our  culture,  and 
our  morals.  Civilisation  was  ad- 


f\r\ 


iv  INTRODUCTION 

vancing  so  brilliantly,  manners 
were  acquiring  such  suavity,  sci- 
ence was  so  increasing  the  conveni- 
ences and  penetrating  the  secrets 
of  life,  learning  was  amassing  so 
superb  an  equipment!  Commerce 
throve,  philanthropies  were  organ- 
ised on  a  vast  scale,  fraternal  senti- 
ments were  formulated  in  count- 
less congresses  and  conventions, 
international  courtesies  were  pa- 
raded the  world  over.  And  then, 
— the  worst  war  in  history  burst 
upon  us! 

And  the  man  on  the  street, 
shocked  beyond  measure,  paralysed 
with  honest  horror,  learns  that  this 
war  is  no  sudden  outbreak  as  he 
fain  would  think  it,  but  the  result 


INTRODUCTION  v 

of  long  secret  struggle,  deliber- 
ately foreseen  and  prepared  for  by 
more  than  one  of  the  warring  pow- 
ers; outward  expression  of  an  in- 
ward state  that  has  been  existing 
continuously  under  society's  fair 
surface. 

What  can  he  conclude  but  that 
civilisation  is  powerless  in  itself  to 
destroy  the  brute  in  man?  He  re- 
flects. He  perceives  that  the  nations 
at  their  best  have  rarely  looked  be- 
yond the  limits  of  their  own  well- 
being,  to  the  benefit  of  the  whole 
world-order;  that  the  sacrifice  of 
the  strong  for  the  weak,  a  princi- 
ple which  struggles  desperately 
for  existence  even  in  private  lives, 
has  never  even  been  fairly  contem- 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

plated  as  an  ideal  for  national  con- 
duct. And  he  begins  to  wonder 
whether  civilisation  as  such  can 
ever  be  expected  to  protect  man 
against  his  natural  passions,  or 
whether  perhaps  that  holy  and  keen 
thinker,  John  Henry  Newman,  was 
right  in  regarding  it  almost  as 
antichrist,  as  the  arch-deceiver,  the 
great  enemy  of  the  soul. 

So  sharp  is  the  question  raised 
that  some  sincere  and  brave  Chris- 
tian thinkers  are  beginning  to  as- 
sert boldly  in  public  that  the 
teachings  of  the  New  Testament 
were  never  intended  to  apply  to 
corporate  action,  on  the  part  of 
nations  or  of  economic  groups ;  that 
they  are  meant  purely  for  individ- 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

ual  use,  and  that  international 
morality  should  not  be  expected 
to  rise  above  the  Old  Testament 
law  of  equal  justice,  involving  the 
right  to  retaliation  and  self-de- 
fence: an  eye  for  an  eye  and  a 
tooth  for  a  tooth.  And  surely  this 
frank  position  is  better  than  a 
facile  assumption  that  the  ideals  of 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  are  uni- 
versal, combined  with  easy-going 
connivance  at  the  opposite  policy. 
The  world-anguish  through  which 
we  are  passing  is  a  great  disperser 
of  delusions.  Since  August,  1914, 
it  is  no  longer  possible  to  entertain 
the  false  and  dangerous  belief  that 
we  are  already  members  of  a  Chris- 
tian world.  It  is  good  for  us  to 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

face  the  plain  fact,  that  no  nation 
and  no  social  class  has  yet  even 
dared  pretend  to  shape  its  corpor- 
ate policy  by  the  words  of  Jesus. 
It  is  better  even  to  defend  that  fact 
than  to  deny  it! 

Many  of  us,  however,  are  not 
ready  to  defend  or  to  acquiesce  in 
it.  We  see  that  there  is  a  re- 
straining power  in  the  world :  a  su- 
pernatural power,  one  is  inclined 
in  all  simplicity  to  say,  as  one  real- 
ises the  fierceness  of  the  instincts 
against  which  it  has  successfully 
contended.  This  power  has  proved 
itself  by  affording  effective  help  to 
hundreds,  nay  thousands  of  people 
from  generation  to  generation,  in 
the  age-long  struggle  to  substitute 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

love  for  desire,  meekness  for  self- 
assertion.  So  widely  is  it  opera- 
tive that  any  individual  to-day  who 
acted  as  the  nations  are  acting  in 
their  corporate  capacity  would  not 
only  be  heartily  ashamed  of  himself 
but  would  be  ostracised  or  boycot- 
ted in  general  society.  Seeing  the 
strength  and  tenacity  of  this  power, 
we  can  not  help  believing  that  it 
can  be  extended  in  scope,  and  the 
only  salvation  we  see  for  the  world 
is  in  the  application  of  it  to  politi- 
cal and  economic  life  as  well  as  to 
personal.  Jesus  and  Politics!  the 
very  phrase  brings  to  our  minds  re- 
lief. 

We  believe  that  we  have  good 
reasons  for  this  hope  of  ours,  that 


x  INTRODUCTION 

politics  shall  yet  be  saved  by  Jesus. 
The  great  reason  is  of  course  that 
He  is  our  Master  and  that  He 
bade  us  pray  that  God's  Kingdom 
should  come  on  earth.  He  would 
never  have  told  us  to  pray  for  an 
impossibility.  That  Kingdom  was 
His  social  ideal.  To  found  it  was 
the  official  purpose  of  His  life, 
from  the  day  when  He  took  up  the 
mission  of  the  Baptist  and  went 
about  Galilee  preaching  the  Good 
Tidings,  to  the  great  Forty  Days 
when  in  the  mystery  of  the  Resur- 
rection Light,  He  was  with  His 
disciples  preaching  and  teaching 
the  things  pertaining  to  the  King- 
dom of  God.  To-day  we  realise 
that  ideal  as  men  have  not  done 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

since  the  first  Christian  ages:  it 
shines  against  earth's  stormy  back- 
ground with  a  heavenly  radiance: 
it  is  the  Land  of  Promise  whither 
all  true  pilgrims  must  bend  their 
way. 

But  can  any  one  now  live  per- 
fectly the  life  of  a  citizen  of  that 
Kingdom,  according  to  its  laws 
laid  down  in  the  Beatitudes  and 
the  following  passages?  No,  we 
find  that  we  can  not.  It  is  useless 
to  hold  before  us  the  Counsels  of 
Perfection  for  private  life,  at  the 
same  time  telling  us  that  society  as 
a  whole  in  its  corporate  divisions 
must  not  be  expected  to  follow 
them.  For  we  find  that  the  laws 
of  society  at  large  determine  our 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

own  behaviour.  What  business 
man  can  be  meek  to  the  uttermost 
in  his  dealings  with  his  competi- 
tors ?  Who  can  toss  away  all  care 
for  the  morrow,  with  families  de- 
pendent on  him  which  would  be 
thrown  back  as  a  public  charge,  did 
he  reject  the  thrift,  the  efficiency, 
the  practical  foresight,  which  the 
world  admires  so  much  and  which 
are  so  ignored  in  the  words  of 
Christ?  What  would  happen  if 
the  employer  of  labor  turned  the 
other  cheek  to  the  labor-organisa- 
tion, and  went  two  miles  with  it  in 
the  matter  of  increased  wages 
when  they  compelled  him  to  go 
one?  .  .  .  The  experiment  would 
be  interesting  to  try !  The  truth  is 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

that  private  and  public  activities 
are  so  interwoven  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  separate  them,  and  we  shall 
fall  into  our  present  hopeless  con- 
fusion just  so  long  as  we  continue 
to  apply  the  Beatitudes  in  the  in- 
timacies of  personal  life,  but  to  let 
quite  opposite  principles  regulate 
the  large  sections  of  our  conduct 
in  which  the  corporate  attitude  of 
class  or  nation  is  involved. 

People  have  always  realised  the 
paradox  and  the  more  honest  they 
were  the  more  it  drove  them  to  des- 
peration. There  was  an  obvious 
solution,  however;  it  was,  to  run 
away.  That  in  part  at  least  is 
what  monasticism  meant.  In  the 
cloister  one  could  follow  Christ 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

without  reserve.  Meanwhile  it  is 
worth  noting  that  from  the  fourth 
century  on,  the  large  numbers  of 
men  impelled  by  similar  instincts 
to  seek  conditions  under  which 
they  could  literally  obey  their  Mas- 
ter, did  not  remain  isolated.  They 
gathered  into  highly  organised 
communities,  in  which  the  laws  of 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  were  to 
a  large  degree  actually  operative; 
and  from  these  great  and  produc- 
tive centres  of  Christian  commu- 
nism we  have  to-day  much  to  learn. 
The  monk  of  the  best  type  did  not 
bury  himself  in  a  sterile  peace  when 
he  had  fled  from  a  predatory  and 
violent  world;  he  gathered  like- 
minded  hosts  around  him,  and, 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

sharing  all  things  in  common  with 
his  brothers,  he  built  roads  and 
bridges,  cultivated  the  land,  and, 
incidentally  to  saving  his  soul,  pre- 
served literature  for  Europe.  We 
shall  not  do  ill  to  contemplate  him. 
Yet,  attempts  to  revive  monasti- 
cism  to-day  hardly  furnish  us  with 
the  solution  that  we  need. 

How  suggestively  Mr.  Shep- 
heard  discusses  these  difficult  mat- 
ters, and  how  clearly  rings  his 
voice!  One  welcomes  in  the  first 
place  the  deep  and  complete  spirit- 
uality of  his  little  book.  Like  Car- 
lyle  before  him,  his  distress  over 
modern  poverty  is  not  because  it 
entails  suffering,  and  for  improve- 
ment in  material  comfort  as  an  end 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

in  itself,  he  cares  never  a  whit. 
In  "this  dying  world,"  he  is  wholly 
intent  on  the  fate  of  "that  stranger 
companion,  the  soul,"  on  his  desire 
that  it  should  attain  to  the  life  lim- 
itless. Our  superficial  philanthro- 
pies often  distract  us  from  this  in- 
ward quest;  they  do  not  distract 
him,  nor  can  he  listen  to  the  siren 
call  of  the  more  materialised  so- 
cialist schools.  The  manufacture 
of  souls,  as  Ruskin  long  ago  put  it, 
is  the  only  product  he  cares  for. 
But  he  sees  that  modern  conditions 
are  unfavourable  to  this  industry, 
and  that  to  give  souls  their  due  op- 
portunity there  is  work  to  do,  which 
can  be  accomplished  only  through 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

political  means.  Charity  is  not 
enough.  "It  can  send  the  sick 
child  into  the  country,  but  it  can 
not  plan  healthy  towns.  Only  po- 
litical action  can  do  that.  .  .  .  The 
Christian  can  not  even  give  all  that 
he  has  to  the  poor  in  charity.  That 
would  be  only  to  pauperise  the  few 
whom  he  helps  and  to  bring 
himself  down  to  their  miseries. 
Neither  can  pity  lead  him  to  go 
and  live  in  the  slums,  slum-fash- 
ion; there  would  be  only  one  man 
the  more  living  wrongly.  .  .  . 
There  is  only  one  way.  .  .  .  Only 
the  common  will  can  ensure  that 
all  shall  be  well-born.  Only  by  po- 
litical action  can  we  give  every  soul 


xvm 


INTRODUCTION 


its  perfect  opportunity;  only  as 
politicians  do  our  Christian  duty 
perfectly." 

It  grows  strangely  clear  as  he 
proceeds,  seeking  with  the  humility 
of  the  disciple  to  read  the  Master's 
Mind.  The  deep  distrust  and  fear 
of  riches  as  inimical  to  spiritual 
well-being  which  breathes  through 
the  utterances  of  Jesus,  causes  so 
disinterested  a  Hebrew  critic  as 
Montefiore  to  blame  Him  as  a  par- 
tisan of  the  poor,  almost  as  an  em- 
bittered agitator.  This  descrip- 
tion no  one  of  His  followers  could 
endorse ;  yet  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion that  Jesus  does  regard  poverty 
as  a  safer  and  more  blessed  state 
than  wealth.  A  generation  that 


INTRODUCTION 


xix 


says  "Cursed  are  the  poor,"  finds 
it  hard  to  understand  the  first  Be- 
atitude. These  pages  clear  away 
that  confusion  between  the  pov- 
erty we  try  to  abolish,  and  that 
which  Christ  called  Blessed,  which 
has  so  afflicted  Christian  thought. 
People  are  known  to  invoke  Christ's 
words  as  excuse  for  hardening 
their  hearts  against  the  misery  of 
the  tenement-house;  though  one 
observes  them  less  often  seeking 
to  inherit  the  blessing  for  them- 
selves, by  altering  their  mode  of 
life !  But  in  truth,  poverty  did  not 
to  Christ  mean  mutilation,  as  it 
does  to  the  slum-dweller.  "It  is  a 
plain  command, — to  be  poor  in 
spirit,  poor  in  fact — but  He  did  not 


xx  INTRODUCTION 

say,  'Blessed  are  the  halt,  the 
maimed,  the  blind/  He  spent  His 
life  in  healing  them,  and  called 
their  disorders  the  work  of  devils. 
He  loved  that  poverty  which  deliv- 
ers from  the  desire  of  possessions, 
but  He  never  praised  the  broken 
life." 

How  then  can  we  obey  His  com- 
mands? What  shall  we  do, — we 
Christians,  who  too  many  of  us  are 
occupied  in  trying  to  grow  rich 
and,  with  our  wealth,  to  secure  for 
ourselves  good  conditions?  The 
aim  at  least  is  clear:  we  have  "to 
discover  the  means  to  make  the 
right  life  possible  without  personal 
possessions;  poverty  without  dis- 
ability." We  moderns  are  rich 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

unnaturally  or  we  are  poor  igno- 
miniously.  Our  riches  and  our 
poverty  are  both  wrong;  when  we 
are  rich,  keeping  our  wealth  to  our- 
selves, how  hardly  shall  we  pass 
through  the  needle's  eye;  when  we 
are  poor,  starvation  of  mind  and 
spirit  beset  us.  Hundreds  of  con- 
science-smitten people,  caught  in  a 
trap,  restless,  distressed,  are  help- 
lessly aware  of  this  dilemma. 
They  read  wistfully  about  St.  Fran- 
cis, but  if  they  have  commonsense, 
— one  of  the  more  usual  modern 
virtues, — they  see  that  they  would 
do  neither  themselves  nor  anybody 
else  any  good  by  imitating  him. 
They  read  about  Tolstoy,  and  per- 
ceive sadly  that  right  instincts  of 


xxii          INTRODUCTION 

love  and  duty  toward  his  family 
prevented  him  from  obeying  his 
higher  self  and  drove  him  broken- 
hearted to  his  grave. 

For  such  people  the  direct  frank 
words  of  Mr.  Shepheard  would 
seem  to  open  an  escape.  It  waits 
at  the  end  of  a  long  vista  of  politi- 
cal action :  and  the  vista  leads  to  a 
state  in  which  personal  possession 
shall  be  superseded  by  a  common- 
wealth. Well  and  wisely  Mr. 
Shepheard  shows  that  we  shall  at- 
tain this  state,  not  by  setting  Na- 
ture at  defiance,  but  by  following 
the  true  law  of  natural  evolution. 

Only  in  such  a  state  can  the  other 
great  precepts  of  the  Gospels  be- 
come practicable.  Only  there  can 


INTRODUCTION         xxiii 

we  hope  for  freedom  from  that 
care  for  the  morrow  which  is  so 
untrue  to  the  Master's  mind,  and 
get  rid  forever  of  that  corroding 
apprehension  which  has  precipi- 
tated the  great  war  of  nations  and 
which  among  individuals  eats  like 
a  canker  into  all  impulses  of  char- 
ity and  love.  Corporate  meekness, 
the  new  law  for  industrial  rela- 
tions, will  be  competent  to  set  us 
free  from  the  vicious  circle  of  in- 
dustrial competition.  "To  find 
the  political  path  by  which  mercy 
and  meekness  may  inherit  the 
earth," — is  not  that  an  inspiring 
summons  to  the  Christian  mind  of 
the  next  fifty  years?  Let  us  soci- 
alise the  virtues!  So  only  will 


XXIV 


INTRODUCTION 


they  be  found  practicable  to  the 
full. 

Nor  is  the  process  unthinkable; 
for  it  has  already  begun.  This 
book  is  splendidly  hopeful.  "I 
suppose  that  it  is  a  grave  sin  for  a 
Christian  to  pray,  Thy  Kingdom 
come,  and  disbelieve  that  his 
Lord's  Will  must  revolutionise  so- 
ciety" .  .  .  The  great  movement  is 
going  on:  the  movement  to  tax 
and  limit  our  private  possessions. 
All  we  need  is  to  make  it  more  con- 
scious, more  deliberate,  and  to  in- 
stil into  it  a  fuller  spirit  of  Chris- 
tian joy.  "To  complete  what  is  al- 
ready begun  we  shall  indeed  have 
to  give  up  still  more  of  our  per- 
sonal possessions  deliberately  to 


INTRODUCTION          xxv 

the  common  wealth,  but  that  is  the 
happy  way  of  finding  poverty.  It 
would  be  a  poverty  which  is  not 
destitution,  because  the  common 
wealth  would  be  ours  as  every 
one's."  This  sounds  practical:  it 
is  practical!  No  one  can  wholly 
obey  the  commands  of  Jesus  to- 
day, for  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
presupposes  a  fraternal  society  and 
only  in  such  a  society  could  it  be 
followed  perfectly.  But  we  can 
square  our  personal  conduct  to  His 
Will  just  so  far  as  is  possible  with- 
out hurting  other  people;  and  then 
we  can  comfort  our  poor  dissatis- 
fied hearts  and  consciences,  which 
are  full  of  pain  because  this  takes 
us  such  a  little  way  and  plunges  us 


XXVI 


INTRODUCTION 


into  such  constant  inconsistencies, 
by  uniting  with  all  like-minded  dis- 
ciples to  press  by  definite  political 
means,  determined  through  hard 
thinking  and  praying,  toward  the 
better  day  in  which  even  in  this  dy- 
ing world,  we  may  all  be  free  citi- 
zens together  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven. 

And  when  that  day  has  come, 
"nation  shall  not  lift  up  sword 
against  nation,  neither  shall  they 
make  war  any  more." 

VlDA   D.    SCUDDER. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I      JESUS  AND  THE  TWO  WORLDS. 

The  Dying  World  and  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  —  Life  the  concern  of 
the  Soul  — What  is  the  Soul?  — 
Character  or  Possessions?  .  .  I 

II    THE  CHRISTIAN  AND   POLITICS. 
The    Soul    and    its    Disabilities  — 
Bad  Conditions  —  Charity  or  Pol- 
itics?       24 

III  THE  CHURCHES  AND  PARTY  POLITICS. 
Christians  and  Prejudices  of  Party, 

Outlook,  and  Birth  —  Sectarian- 
ism—  The  Study  of  the  Mind  of 
Jesus 38 

IV  "BLESSED  ARE  YE  POOR." 

The  Blessing  of  Poverty  —  The 
Healing  of  the  Maimed  and  Halt 
and  Blind  —  Poverty  without  Dis- 
ability   49 

V    RIGHT  POVERTY. 

The  Natural  Life  —  Personal  Pov- 
erty and  Common  Wealth  — 
Their  coming,  and  Christian 
Logic 59 


CONTENTS 

VI    "BLESSED  ARE  THE  MEEK." 

Meekness  in  the  City  — The  Politi- 
cal Economy  of  Jesus  —  How 
Rivalry  disappears  —  Self-interest 
or  Community? 75 

VII    "As  THYSELF." 

Ourselves  and  Others  —  The  simple 
Eauality —  The  Community  as  the 
Arbiter  of  Neighbor-love  —  The 
inertia  of  Progress  ....  90 

VIII    DUTIES. 

The  Spirit  of  Jesus  in  Private  Life 
—  Political  Methods,  Tests,  and 
Parties  — The  Church  Militant  .  104 

IX    THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORLD. 

Is  the  Church  political  ?  — Mortal 
Ideals  —  The  Church  witnessing 
and  explaining 131 


To  Boanerges  Anyone,  Esq., 

MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  hear  that  you 
have  entered  politics,  you  who  pro- 
fess no  religion.  Do  you  not  know 
that  a  man  must  be  either  a  poli- 
tician and  religious,  or  politician 
and — forgive  me — a  fool? 

I  think  I  hear  your  roar  of  pro- 
test But,  will  you  glance  through 
this  book?  It  is  not  some  private 
madness  of  my  own,  but  a  collec- 
tion of  things  which  are  "in  the 
air,"  things  which  Christians  are 
beginning  to  rediscover  in  their 
faith,  about  life  and  politics.  I 
venture  to  say  that  you  have  noth- 


XXIX 


ing  to  put  forward  so  much  worth 
while,   and   irrefutable   and   thor- 
ough, as  the  politics  of  Jesus. 
Respectfully  yours, 

THE  AUTHOR. 


XXX 


To  Mr.  John  Well-Worker, 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND:  You  are 
certainly  a  Christian — your  works 
prove  it — but  you  seem  to  avoid 
talking  politics,  I  suppose  because 
you  are  so  strong  a  party  man  and 
fear  disagreements;  and  you  hate 
social  reform  in  the  pulpit.  But 
are  you  right?  Did  not  Jesus 
mean  us  to  agree  together  ?  and  did 
He  not  perhaps  give  us,  if  we  look 
closely  enough  and  honestly,  a  com- 
mon programme  in  face  of  the  pov- 
erties and  disabilities  of  others? 
Have  we  been  passing  by  on  the 
other  side?  I  have  tried  to  find 
xxxi 


out  what  He  meant.  Will  you 
read  this  book  and  see  whether  we 
cannot  be  agreed? 

Faithfully  yours, 

THE  AUTHOR. 


xxxii 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

i 

Jesus  and  the  Two  Worlds 

IT  is  no  new  thought  that  life  is 
the  concern  of  the  soul  but  I 
suppose  that  those  who  live  by  it 
are  still  few.  When  a  man  is  so 
busy  in  the  shop  at  the  front  of 
the  house  he  has  no  time  to  remem- 
ber that  he  was  a  pilgrim,  on  the 
way  to  another  land.  "We  have 
all  forgotten  who  we  are."  The 
thought  of  a  larger  destiny  may  be 
the  wonder  of  a  quiet  moment, 


2         JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

some  comfort  perhaps  in  mourn- 
ing; but  it  does  not  go  with  us  al- 
ways. It  is  not  so  real  to  us — this 
clear  consciousness  of  a  spiritual 
life  and  of  the  world  passing  away 
— as  to  lift  our  habitual  outlook  to 
the  plane  where  it  is  self-evident 
that  nothing  is  so  much  worth 
while,  for  ourselves  and  others,  as 
spiritual  attainment;  that  our  sev- 
enty years  are  not  an  end  in  them- 
selves, but  an  adventure  which 
leads  elsewhere. 

I  do  not  only  mean  that  this  is  an 
age  which  is  absorbed  in  admira- 
tion of  wealth  and  power.  I  mean 
that  we  Christians  are  in  danger 
of  forgetting  the  message  of  Jesus. 
I  think  we  had  lost  sight  of  the 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS          3 

Jesus  who  lived  ninteen  hundred 
years  ago  in  Palestine.  Would  it 
be  too  hard  a  thing  to  say  that  our 
forefathers  were  more  concerned 
with  what  they  believed  about  Him 
than  with  belief  in  Him,  with  or- 
thodoxy, more  than  with  His  mes- 
sage? The  pious  founders  of  our 
churches  bound  them  to  hold  dog- 
mas about  Him;  they  set  Him  in  a 
plan — God's  plan  of  salvation  they 
called  it — of  predestination,  justi- 
fication, eternal  punishment,  a  plan 
wonderfully  unlike  the  spirit  of 
Jesus.  I  think  they  had  lost  sight 
of  Him.  They  knew  Him  through 
a  creed;  not  Jesus  as  He  was,  but 
Jesus  in  a  creed.  But  a  new  spirit 
is  rediscovering  Jesus  for  us. 


4          JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

Putting  away  for  a  time  all  the 
dogma  which  had  grown  up  about 
Him  it  has  gone  back  to  the  evan- 
gelists and  has  tried  to  learn  afresh 
who  Jesus  was,  what  He  said, 
what  He  meant;  and,  with  many 
another  rediscovery,  it  has  brought 
home  again  to  us  His  thought 
about  the  two  worlds,  about  life's 
meaning.  Like  ourselves,  His 
generation  had  forgotten  its  pil- 
grimage. From  their  earth-ab- 
sorbed outlook  men  were  seeing  life 
falsely,  setting  their  hearts  upon 
dying  things,  riches,  honours,  out- 
ward observance,  armaments;  but 
Jesus  saw  things  as  they  are.  He 
saw  the  world  passing  away,  and 
another  world,  real,  vivid,  over- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS          5 

shadowing  it,  ready  to  break  in 
upon  it;  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven, 
at  hand.  The  world's  mortality 
was  so  plain  to  Him — He  seemed 
to  look  for  it  to  roll  away  like  a 
scroll — that  He  was  always  talking 
of  the  end,  and  always  praising 
those  whose  hearts  were  set  on  the 
Kingdom  first,  and  crying  woe 
upon  the  falsehood  which  hoped  in 
power  or  praise;  or  enlarged  its 
wealth;  or  lost  its  soul  to  gain  the 
world.  The  spiritual  life  was  the 
centre  and  meaning  of  everything; 
the  treasure  for  which  a  man  would 
spend  all;  the  refuge  from  mortal- 
ity. We  who  lapse  from  that  daily 
atmosphere  find  it  hard  to  hold  His 
point  of  view.  The  world  comes 


6         JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

to  be  first  in  our  thought,  the  get- 
ting and  spending  of  our  seventy 
years;  man  becomes  human,  and 
present  ends  sufficient.  But  Jesus 
who  never  lost  the  consciousness  of 
the  two  worlds  could  pronounce 
those  truths  which  to-day  search 
our  hearts :  "Blessed  are  ye  poor" : 
"Blessed  are  ye  that  hunger  now" : 
"Blessed  are  the  merciful": 
"Blessed  are  ye  when  men  shall  re- 
vile you."  And  unblessed  are  the 
pushful,  the  unmerciful,  those  who 
"make  good"  in  the  sight  of  their 
generation;  for  they  lay  up  treas- 
ure in  a  dying  world. 

His  good  news  was  that  there  is 
another  life  and  order.  Men  are 
the  sons  of  God:  and  God  is  a 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS          7 

Spirit:  and  life  is  man's  adventure 
after  spiritual  gain.  The  fool 
pulls  down  his  barns  and  builds 
greater,  comforting  himself  with 
his  security;  but  Jesus  lived  and 
thought  and  spoke  on  that  plane 
where  nothing  is  so  real  as  the  soul. 
He  saw  the  truth — death,  and 
man's  possessions  taken  from  him, 
but  his  spirit  gone  out  to  the  right 
hand  of  God,  or  to  the  weeping  and 
gnashing  of  teeth.  What,  then, 
should  a  man  give  in  exchange  for 
his  soul? 

To  some,  few  and  fortunate,  the 
conviction  of  the  supremacy  of 
spirit  is  natural,  as  though  they 
came  into  the  world  trailing  the 
cloud  of  glory.  They  are  the 


8         JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

"once-born"  of  the  kingdom,  the 
men  who  know,  and  need  no  other 
proof  than  their  own  life,  which 
climbs  up  the  inward  ascent, 
through  emotion  and  thought,  in- 
tuition and  spirit,  to  heights  which 
rise  always  higher.  That  way  lies 
the  life  limitless:  it  is  not  like  the 
paths  through  the  world  which  end 
in  disappointment  of  ambition,  or, 
if  one  wins  the  whole  world,  in  fail- 
ure of  power,  a  drawing  near  to 
death:  the  broken  roads  and  the 
final  darkness  are  the  plain  warn- 
ing that  that  way  lies  no  thorough- 
fare for  man's  soul.  It  may  be 
that  the  purpose  of  life  is  the  re- 
discovery of  the  right  way,  of  the 
impossibility  of  humanity's  out- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS          9 

ward  satisfaction.  But  to  many, 
not  the  fortunate  and  "once-born," 
it  is  not  easy  to  attune  their  faith 
to  the  unworldliness  of  Jesus.  It 
needs  a  new  conversion,  an  over- 
turning of  life-long  habit,  and 
birth  into  another  plane,  to  under- 
stand His  whole  mind.  Even  to 
the  Christian  the  world  may  still 
seem  more  real  than  spirit.  For 
we  are  like  those  Flat-land  crea- 
tures— to  use  the  old  parallel — like 
pieces  of  paper  moved  across  and 
up  and  down  over  a  table,  and 
round  about  each  other,  unaware 
of  the  hand  which  comes  down 
from  above,  a  hand  they  cannot 
see  because  they  have  only  two 
dimensions  and  cannot  look  into 


io        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

the  above.  So  we  may  be  hardly 
conscious  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  so  real  and  vivid  to  Him, 
may  hardly  know  that  we  have  a 
soul,  because  it  is  hidden  and  we 
have  been  all  eyes  and  ears  and 
hands  busy  outwardly. 

But  there  are  many  things, 
nearer  than  hands  or  feet,  which 
are  hidden  from  us  until  we  search 
for  them.  Our  own  body  is  one  of 
them.  I  live  with  my  body;  and  it 
is  part  of  myself :  and  yet  I  do  not 
know  all  that  it  is  doing:  how  I 
walk,  or  digest;  how  the  blood  is 
renewed  in  my  breathing  and  cir- 
culates through  arteries  and  veins, 
— no  one  knew  that  in  all  the  his- 
tory of  the  world  until  a  few  years 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS         n 

ago — nor  how  all  day  and  all  night, 
growing  and  changing  and  build- 
ing up  nerves  and  brain-cells  and 
muscles,  my  body  keeps  me  alive 
and  in  health.  It  is  myself,  but  a 
hidden  self. 

We  do  not  know  all  our  mind. 
As  I  write  I  need  only  to  think  of 
what  I  am  trying  to  say;  but  my 
hand  writes  of  itself,  and  the  words 
spell  themselves.  It  must  be  I 
who  write  and  spell :  but  I  am  not 
conscious  of  how  I  do  it.  As  you 
read,  the  words  pass  by  like  the 
pictures  of  a  cinematograph,  each 
one  flashing  up  and  gone  by,  and 
somewhere  within  you  they  com- 
bine into  sentences  and  meanings; 
but  you  are  not  conscious  of  how  it 


12        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

is  done.  One  runs  downstairs  in 
the  morning  thinking  of  anything 
but  one's  feet.  Who  brings  me 
safely  downstairs?  I  do  not;  I 
never  think  about  it.  One  has  to 
stop  and  watch  and  become  aware 
with  surprise  that  a  self  of  which 
we  are  not  conscious  is  always 
managing  us;  while  we  are  think- 
ing of  other  things  it  lifts  our 
hand,  feeds  us,  leads  us  through 
crowded  streets,  finds  the  right 
notes  on  the  piano  while  we  are  in- 
tent on  the  page  of  music:  it  does 
a  hundred  unnoticed  things  with- 
out our  help,  while  our  conscious 
mind  is  far  away.  It  makes  peo- 
ple walk  in  their  sleep.  It  thinks 
and  settles  problems  in  the  night. 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        13 

It  invented  quaternions,  and  com- 
posed Tartini's  "Devil's  Trill"; 
and  can  in  a  good  bank-clerk  add 
up  columns  of  figures  with  inhu- 
man accuracy.  It  has  its  little 
habits,  taps  our  fingers  on  the  table, 
hums,  fidgets,  until  some  good 
friend  corrects  us.  A  woman 
sews,  sews,  and  talks  of  fifty  things, 
unconscious  of  the  stitching;  her 
other  self  is  sewing.  A  child  is 
saying  a  long  piece ;  he  seems  to  be 
just  listening,  rather  anxiously,  for 
any  tangle,  but  the  piece  unwinds 
itself  out  of  memory.  I  forget 
everything,  but  my  hidden  mind 
never  forgets ;  it  is  that  prodigious 
memory  of  a  lifetime  from  which 
when  I  am  old  the  little  things 


14        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

which  happened  long  ago  will  come 
back. 

In  the  same  way  we  hardly  know 
that  we  have  a  soul.  There  is 
something  in  us  which  is  good  or 
bad ;  but  it  is  a  hidden  thing.  Sup- 
pose that  you  sit  down  to  think  out 
whether  you  are  a  good  man  or  not. 
No  answer  comes  from  your  direct 
consciousness.  You  do  not  see 
your  soul  in  shining  white  nor  be- 
spattered black;  you  are  not  con- 
scious of  a  saintly  self,  nor  a  sin- 
ful; indeed,  if  you  have  any  opin- 
ion of  your  goodness  most  likely  it 
is  sin,  and  many  a  saint  believes 
himself  a  great  sinner.  Your  soul 
is  a  stranger-companion.  If  you 
would  know  the  truth  about  it  you 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        15 

must  needs  sit  still  and  wait  and 
see  what  comes  up  from  within, 
what  desires,  what  interests,  what 
impulse  to  good  deeds.  You  must 
know  your  soul  and  judge  your  soul, 
as  you  judge  other  people;  not  by 
direct  sight  of  their  inner  state, 
but  by  their  actions;  if  they  do 
good,  then  are  they  good,  but  if 
evil,  evil.  No  man  has  seen  his 
soul  at  any  time :  and  yet  it  is  there, 
in  the  invisible  dimension ;  it  is  our- 
self ,  because  in  us  it  does  good  or 
evil.  It  follows  with  us  always,  a 
spirit  hidden  in  some  depth  of  life 
into  which  we  cannot  look. 

But  as  we  become  aware  of  our 
unseen  bodily  life  by  pain  in  ill- 
health;  and  as  the  thoughts  and 


16        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

memories  which  stream  up  from  it 
prove  to  us  the  existence  of  a  hid- 
den mental  life,  so  do  we  become 
conscious  of  our  soul  by  the  trouble 
into  which  it  throws  us.  We  are 
uneasy,  remorseful;  our  soul  hates 
the  thing  we  did  and  troubles  us 
about  it.  Or  suddenly  we  have  an 
impulse  to  a  kindness;  our  "better 
self"  sends  us  out  upon  the  good 
errand.  Or  we  do  evil  against  our 
will;  our  sick  soul  overwhelmed 
our  judgment.  Or,  after  years  of 
sin,  in  a  moment,  a  new  soul  sweeps 
up, — a  soul  we  never  dreamed  that 
we  possessed — and  carries  us  away 
into  a  changed  life  where  even  the 
desire  of  sin  is  buried  for  ever. 
We  feed  our  body  with  plain 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        17 

food  and  fresh  air  and  exercise, 
and  unseen,  by  hidden  processes,  it 
becomes  strong  and  healthy:  we 
feed  our  mind  with  thinking  and 
knowledge,  and  unseen  too,  by  hid- 
den processes,  it  becomes  active 
and  rich.  And  we  make  our  own 
soul:  I,  the  keeper  at  the  gate  of 
Self,  stand  there  and  see  all  that  go 
by  in  the  street  of  experience;  and 
some  I  call  in  and  welcome;  and 
against  some,  if  I  am  wise,  the  ugly 
and  base,  I  bar  the  door :  for  what- 
ever goes  in  meets  with  the  secret 
Person  in  my  house  and  does  him 
good  or  evil.  And  at  the  door  I 
see  those  that  pass  out  of  my 
house,  'the  messengers  from  the 
Person  within;  some  I  do  not  like 


i8        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

and  turn  them  back  again;  but 
others  I  send  forth  gladly.  So  I 
watch  over  my  secret  soul,  as 
though  it  were  a  dear  child,  or  a 
great  lord,  who  may  be  hurt  by 
wrong-doers.  For  all  the  time 
whatever  goes  in  changes  the  soul, 
unawares,  by  hidden  processes, 
and  we  discover  suddenly  that  we 
have  grown  better  or  worse.  The 
soul,  in  secret,  changes  every  day. 
It  becomes  Character,  what  We 
are.  It  will  go  with  us,  as  we  have 
made  it,  for  ever. 

Why  do  I  say  "for  ever"?  Be- 
cause I  know  of  nothing  which  can 
destroy  the  soul.  Death  is  the  dis- 
ease of  the  body.  It  is  always  the 
destruction  of  bodily  things  by  bod- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        19 

ily;  of  flesh  by  wounds  or  disease. 
But  the  soul  in  its  bodiless  dimen- 
sion has  no  body  to  be  hurt.  One 
cannot  stab  nor  shoot  even  a 
thought.  An  emotion  cannot  fall 
sick  of  a  disease.  Death  cannot 
touch  a  soul.  It  may  break  down 
the  walls  of  the  house  of  flesh,  but 
the  soul  lives  safe  beyond  the  world 
where  death  is. 

The  hidden,  spiritual  life  is  our 
reality,  what  we  are ;  our  chief  con- 
cern therefore  in  all  men.  Char- 
acter matters  most,  what  men  are, 
not  what  they  possess.  We  come 
back  to  the  note  of  Jesus,  to  the  un- 
worldliness  about  which  He  never 
reasoned  but  spoke  with  authority, 
the  wisdom  which  grows  upon 


20        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

every  man  who  thinks  out  his  life 
with  its  outward  blind  alleys,  and 
its  limitless  inward  progress;  its 
outward  dyings,  and  spiritual  in- 
destructibility. For  which  then 
should  men  live  ? 

If  the  inward  life  were  only  an 
earthly  thing  of  the  two  worlds  it 
would  still  be  the  more  valuable; 
for  what  a  man  is  must  be  more  to 
him  than  what  he  has.  Outward 
accidents  cannot  spoil  his  life  whose 
strength  is  from  within.  Whether 
it  survives  bodily  death  or  not, 
character  is  better  than  posses- 
sions; the  soul  more  precious  than 
the  world.  But,  far  more,  if  death 
is  only  the  dissolution  of  the  body, 
and  if,  should  we  live  beyond  bod- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        21 

ily  death,  we  must  be  still  ourselves 
— how  can  we  be  anything  else? — 
the  same  in  character  and  desire, 
then  Jesus  was  right.  What  a 
man  is,  what  he  is  becoming,  mat- 
ters eternally.  Was  it  not  this 
that  He  meant  by  "  laying  up  treas- 
ure in  Heaven"?  He  did  not  say 
that  every  good  deed  done  and 
every  sin  is  entered  up  by  the  re- 
cording angels  in  the  Book  of  Life, 
and  our  balance  struck  and  paid  in 
heavenly  enjoyments.  That  was 
not  His  way  of  thinking.  But  He 
meant,  one  imagines,  that  by  every 
good  deed  done  a  man  becomes  bet- 
ter, and  by  every  evil  deed  worse; 
that  we  change  our  soul  by  every 
thought  and  desire  unrestrained; 


22        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

that  so  we  prepare  a  spiritual  fate 
far  more  important  than  anything 
which  may  befall  us  here;  that 
nothing  therefore  matters  so  much, 
for  ourselves  or  others,  as  spiritual 
attainment. 

Men  have  always  sought  a  satis- 
faction that  will  not  change  and 
fail  as  earthly  things  do.  The 
saints  lived  in  the  presence  of  the 
other  world.  They  were  so  con- 
scious of  it  that  the  natural  world 
lost  all  its  claim,  except  for  pity 
and  help  of  other  lives;  and  lesser 
Christians  sing  the  simple  hymns 
of  faith,  about  the  heavenly  home, 
the  sojourning  and  pilgrimage 
here,  of  our  citizenship  of  another 
country,  with  an  emotion  they 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        23 

hardly  understand.  Very  often 
they  have  proved  the  mystery  true 
by  their  lives  changed  to  heroic 
confidence;  and  when  the  words  of 
Jesus  are  understood  the  hearts  of 
the  simple  answer  instantly,  as 
though  they  had  known  it  before. 
But  He  Himself  saw  clearly,  as 
noonday,  that  which  to  us  is  only 
dim.  He  lived  on  the  plane  where 
the  two  worlds  are  self-evident; 
the  one  passing  away;  the  other  a 
spiritual  life.  His  talk  was  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,  beyond  and 
within  us;  of  the  prodigal  and  his 
homeward  longing.  He  was  al- 
ways unworldly.  To  Him  life  was 
always  the  concern  of  the  soul. 


II 

The  Christian  and  Politics 

THOUGH  it  may  seem  at 
first  sight  a  paradox,  the 
very  unworldliness  which  Chris- 
tians learn  from  Jesus  makes  poli- 
tics possible  to  them.  In  one  sense 
it  might  be  true  to  say  that  Jesus 
had  no  politics.  He  who  could 
have  given  men  the  perfect 
government  which  had  been  so 
long  dreamed  of  refused  the  out- 
spread kingdoms  of  the  world. 
That  may  seem  strange  to  us  who 

are  so  busy  with  organised  means 

24 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        25 

and  parties,  but  to  Him  man's 
social  troubles  were  spiritually 
caused,  and  spiritually  healed. 
"For  from  within,  out  of  the  heart 
of  man,  proceed  the  evil  thoughts, 
thefts,  covetousness,"  which  are 
the  origins  of  social  wrong;  and 
from  within,  out  of  the  heart  of 
man,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
comes  out  into  the  world  and 
clothes  itself,  if  you  will,  in  Acts 
of  Parliament.  But  the  spiritual 
deliverance  is  first.  The  pure  in 
heart  will  vote  right.  But  to  begin 
from  without,  to  put  politics  first, 
as  though  men  were  made  good  by 
Act  of  Parliament,  is  to  begin  at 
the  wrong  end.  While  there  is 
one  covetous  heart  left  social  injus- 


26        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

tice  will  still  be  done.  Again,  it 
was  self-evident  to  Jesus,  as  it  is 
not  always  to  us,  that  man  does  not 
live  by  bread  alone.  Our  politics 
are  liable  to  the  false  hope  that  if 
only  the  disabilities  and  oppressions 
of  the  people  were  removed  and 
every  man  had  a  living  wage,  short 
hours,  and  healthy  surroundings, 
then  should  we  all  be  happy.  But 
it  would  not  be  so.  Obviously  not ; 
there  are  those  who  have  every- 
thing and  yet  are  miserable.  The 
people  are  souls,  restless  until  they 
find  rest  in  God,  a  truth  which  fools 
may  deride,  but  which  proves  itself 
again  and  again,  not  only  in  the 
experience  of  mystics,  but  in  the 
flow  of  life  itself  in  generations, 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        27 

like  that  which  is  passing  now, 
which  have  tried  to  find  happiness 
in  prosperity  and  now  are  wonder- 
fully, half  unconsciously,  moved  by 
ideals  of  peace  and  goodwill  which 
have  their  source  in  the  pressure 
of  spiritual  dissatisfaction.  Un- 
conscious with  them,  to  Jesus  and 
to  those  who  understood  His  secret 
of  the  Kingdom  it  was  self-evident 
in  experience  that  their  power  to 
meet  life  was  given  them  in  those 
hours,  the  long  night  of  prayer 
upon  the  mountain,  or  the  prepara- 
tion in  retirement,  when  they  came 
near  to  the  spiritual  world,  and 
power  flowed  into  them  and  the 
contentment  of  a  life  which  no  out- 
ward want  could  spoil.  In  that 


28        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

knowledge  it  seemed  to  them  not 
worth  while  to  strive  by  outward 
means;  they  only  longed  to  bring 
home  to  other  men  the  truth,  self- 
evident  to  them,  that  we  are  rest- 
less until  we  find  our  home,  here, 
and  now,  in  the  overshadowing 
world  of  spirit. 

Nevertheless,  and  this  is  the 
complement  of  the  other  truth,  the 
Christian  life  is  not  only  contem- 
plative, not  content  to  wait  always 
upon  its  spiritual  source,  but  ac- 
tive. Jesus  came  down  from  the 
mountains  to  heal  their  bodily  dis- 
eases. Life  which  does  not  go  out 
to  others  is  dead.  And  it  is  their 
very  preferring  of  the  spiritual  be- 
fore all  else  which  makes  politics 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        29 

possible  to  Christians.  Political 
hopes  which  expect  only  earthly 
happiness  are  impossible  to  those 
who  with  Jesus  have  seen  the 
world  passing  away.  The  King- 
dom is  "in  the  Heavens/'  of  an- 
other order;  spiritual.  But  if  life 
is  the  concern  of  the  soul  it  matters 
a  great  deal  that  every  soul  should 
have  its  opportunity. 

It  matters  that  it  should  be  well- 
born into  a  healthy  body.  If  the 
people  were  only  so  many  hands  at 
work,  so  many  mouths  to  feed,  it 
would  be  still  vital,  from  any  point 
of  view,  military,  industrial,  aes- 
thetic; much  more  if  the  inward 
life  is  the  precious  and  surviving 
reality;  the  body  is  the  house  of 


30        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

the  soul ;  ill-born  it  may  be  the  poor 
soul's  burden  through  all  its  experi- 
ence here. 

It  matters  that  the  people  should 
be  well  fed  and  housed.  Starved 
and  in  bad  surroundings  no  man 
can  be  himself.  Harassed  by  the 
care  of  finding  somehow  daily 
bread  not  even  the  saint  escapes 
temptation  and  distraction  from 
God.  "Brother  Body,"  sick  and 
hungry,  drives  men  to  sin.  And 
for  the  sake  of  their  eternal  part  it 
matters  that  the  people  should  be 
educated,  for  the  mind  feeds  the  in- 
ward life;  and  they  must  have  lei- 
sure, for  some  are  so  busy  that  they 
never  have  time  to  rest,  and  dis- 
cover that  they  had  a  soul. 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        31 

But  to  clothe  the  naked,  and  feed 
the  hungry,  and  set  free  the  pris- 
oned soul,  means  political  action. 
Charity  is  not  enough.  One  has 
heard  it  said,  with  a  strange  per- 
version of  thought,  that  the  poor 
are  always  with  us,  for  the  exer- 
cise of  our  charitable  virtues.  As 
though  God  created  them  for  our 
salvation!  As  though  His  chosen 
few  were  to  be  perfected  by  the 
sufferings  of  these  sad  vessels  of 
wrath !  Such  words  are  the  prod- 
uct of  religious  vanity,  or  perhaps 
an  unconsciously  convenient  excuse 
for  keeping  other  people  in  the  sta- 
tion of  life  to  which  we  say  that  it 
has  pleased  Almighty  God  to  call 
them.  The  Christian's  duty  is 


32        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

something  less  agreeable;  it  in- 
volves soiling  our  hands  with  poli- 
tics and  digging  down  to  the  roots 
of  the  social  evils  which  create  the 
objects  of  our  charity;  not  neglect- 
ing the  easier  virtue,  but  doing 
justly  and  believing  uncompromis- 
ingly that  any  soul  is  worth  as 
much  as  our  own.  And  one  must 
go  beyond  that;  for  Jesus  never 
commended  bare  justice,  the  eye 
for  an  eye,  the  tooth  for  a  tooth, 
but  the  real  charity  which  is  not 
puffed  up  with  the  sense  of  its  vir- 
tue, seeks  not  its  own  salvation,  and 
though  it  gives  all  its  goods  to  feed 
the  poor  knows  that  it  profits  noth- 
ing without  the  love  which  is  will- 
ing to  give  away  even  its  rights. 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        33 

One  begins  with  charity — for 
every  little  child  has  a  charitable 
heart;  when  we  first  heard  about 
the  ragged  and  hungry,  we  were 
quick  to  give,  a  dinner  to  waifs 
perhaps,  or  a  precious  penny  in  the 
plate.  It  seemed  the  only  way  to 
ease  our  heart.  Or  if  later  we 
gave  service  and  listened  to  the  tale 
of  unfortunate  and  narrowed  lives, 
of  wrongs  and  mistakes,  and  tried 
to  find  a  remedy  in  charity,  whether 
it  were  money  or  service,  we  grew 
discontented.  True,  sufferings 
were  relieved  and  some  were  drawn 
out  of  hopelessness  and  sent  away 
upon  a  new  life.  Charity  was  a 
light  in  dark  places.  But  the  dark 
places  were  still  there.  We  were 


34        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

challenged  to  something  greater 
than  charity.  The  sovereign 
tinkled  in  the  plate  with  a  note  of 
mockery.  What  can  money  do? 
Or  service?  We  remember  that 
they  paraded  our  streets  with  a 
banner  which  damned  our  charity. 
We  saw  that  charity  will  never  help 
Lazarus  to  get  up  and  go  away 
from  the  gate :  he  sits  all  the  closer 
waiting  for  another  dole.  But  the 
real  evil  which  made  him  a  beggar 
we  had  not  touched.  Charity  is  a 
palliative,  not  a  cure;  a  salving  of 
conscience,  not  a  complete  Chris- 
tianity. It  eases  the  pain,  but  only 
masks  the  disease.  It  can  give  the 
unemployed  food  and  clothing,  but 
cannot  cure  unemployment.  It 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        35 

can  send  the  sick  child  into  the 
country  to  recover  from  the  dis- 
eases of  over-crowding,  but  it  can- 
not plan  healthy  towns.  Only  po- 
litical action  can  do  that.  Charity 
can  advise  the  poor  man  cursed 
with  a  wife  whose  drunkenness 
and  unfaithfulness  are  destroying 
his  children  that  divorce  will  cost 
him  a  sum  which  he  is  never  likely 
to  possess;  but  only  the  conscience 
of  the  community  can  bring  the 
remedy  within  his  means.  Char- 
ity may  turn  the  eyes  of  the  suffer- 
ing to  a  recompense  above,  but  it 
can  never  change  earth  into 
heaven,  nor  even  into  a  tolerable 
purgatory  for  some.  The  Chris- 
tian cannot  even  give  all  that  he 


36        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

has  to  the  poor,  in  charity.  That 
would  be  only  to  pauperise  the  few 
whom  he  helps  and  to  bring 
himself  down  to  their  miseries. 
Neither  can  pity  lead  him  to  go  and 
live  in  the  slums,  slum-fashion; 
there  would  be  only  one  man  the 
more  living  wrongly.  There  is 
only  one  way.  Does  he  believe 
that  every  man  should  have  the 
good  health  which  he  enjoys? 
Then  for  that  they  need  open  coun- 
try. Only  an  Act  of  the  Legisla- 
ture can  bring  the  people  back  to 
the  land.  Or  he  believes  that 
every  clever  boy  and  girl  should 
have  the  chance  of  the  best  educa- 
tion ?  Only  political  action  can  set 
up  the  secondary  system  which 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        37 

leads  from  the  Common  Schools  to 
the  University.  Or,  that  every 
soul  should  have  an  equal  chance? 
But  the  race  is  unequally  handi- 
capped. No  charity  nor  private 
effort  can  start  the  low-born  where 
the  gentleman  begins.  Only  the 
common  will  can  ensure  that  all 
shall  be  well-born.  Only  by  politi- 
cal action  can  we  give  every  soul 
its  perfect  opportunity;  only  as 
politicians  do  our  Christian  duty 
perfectly. 


in 

The  Churches  and  Party  Politics 

BUT  now  we  Christians  have 
to  accuse  one,  another. 
Ours  is  one  faith,  the  faith  of  our 
Lord.  We  are  all  for  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven.  We  all  believe 
that  life  is  the  concern  of  the  soul : 
we  would  all  understand  our  Lord's 
will  and  do  it.  But  we  are  divided 
politically.  There  are  men  who 
worship  in  the  same  church  with 
us  to  whom  we  cannot  talk  politics, 
except  jokingly,  because  of  our 
38 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        39 

divisions.  They  believe  in  every 
political  thing  which  we  abhor,  and 
are  estranged  from  us;  and  yet 
they  have  the  same  Lord,  and  the 
same  pity  at  heart. 

We  came  by  the  political  preju- 
dices which  separate  us  ignorantly 
and  ingloriously.  How  many  of 
us  are  Republicans  for  instance  be- 
cause we  have  studied  the  thing  for 
ourselves?  Have  we  ever  read 
the  history  of  the  former  Republi- 
can Party  and  how  it  came  into 
existence  and  was  transmuted. 
Much  more,  have  we  ever  referred 
the  G.  O.  P.  to  our  Christian  prin- 
ciples? Are  we  Tariff  Reformers 
because  we  are  Christians?  or  did 
we  take  up  Progressivism  or  Tar- 


40        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

iff  Reform  or  Votes  for  Women 
because  the  party  bosses  made  it  a 
party  cry  and  we  discovered  argu- 
ments for  our  beliefs  from  the 
party  newspapers  afterwards,  with 
their  suppressions  and  half-truths  ? 
Or,  our  political  prejudices  are 
the  result  of  our  circumstances. 
If  I  am  the  son  of  a  God-fearing 
land  owner  and  have  seen  him  deal 
justly  with  his  tenants  because  he 
was  a  Christian,  how  can  I  really 
understand  the  Christian  Socialist  ? 
If  I  have  been  brought  up  in  a  New 
England  and  strongly  anti-Catho- 
lic home,  the  head  of  the  Mormon 
Church  and  Cardinals  of  Rome 
seem  to  me  very  strange  kinds  of 
Christians.  Yet  I  dare  not  deny 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        41 

their  Christianity.  Or,  if  I  am  a 
Syndicalist  there  seems  to  be  a 
great  gulf  of  misunderstanding  be- 
tween me  and  the  Christian  em- 
ployer. My  prejudices  of  party, 
or  of  outlook,  cut  me  off  from  other 
Christians.  Yet  many  of  them 
have  given  up  more  for  their  faith 
than  ever  I  did. 

Our  Lord  prayed  that  we  might 
be  one,  but  we  are  broken  into  par- 
ties. The  Enemy  has  known  how 
to  divide  us  and  rule.  It  may  be 
hard  to  fix  our  eyes  steadily  upon 
the  vision  of  one  creed,  common  in 
all  its  detail  and  implication,  but 
we  have  no  excuse  that  we  have  not 
together  healed  the  sick  and  com- 
forted the  miserable.  Long  ago 


42        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

the    Church,    reunited    in    action, 
might  have  overcome  the  world. 

Not  that  we  are  so  little-minded 
as  to  believe  that  our  political  op- 
ponents are  rogues.  The  Chris- 
tian thinks  no  evil.  But  the  mote 
in  our  brother's  eye  is  so  obvious, 
and  it  must  interfere  with  his  sight, 
and  it  is  our  duty  to  tell  him  of  it. 
The  Baptists,  for  instance,  think 
so  much  of  John  Smyth,  the  Pres- 
byterians of  Calvin,  and  the  Meth- 
odists of  Wesley.  If  we  could 
have  a  sectarian  holiday,  only  for 
a  year,  we  should  be  a  long  way 
towards  peace.  There  are  still 
disabilities;  in  England  they  still 
think  that  a  "dissenter"  is  not  fit 
to  hold  a  doctor's  degree  in  divin- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        43 

ity  at  Oxford,  but  such  wrongs  are 
not  mitigated  by  recalling  a  bitter- 
ness two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
past;  nor  by  hard  words  about 
bishops;  nor  by  self-praise  of  the 
voluntary  system.  Too  eloquent 
virtues  offend  friendship;  and  we 
are  told  to  turn  the  other  cheek. 
Our  church,  Church  Catholic  or 
Little  Bethel,  must  not  grow  to  be 
the  false  figure  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  lest  we  become  partisans 
first,  the  Sons  of  the  Kingdom  by 
after-thought. 

The  danger  is  greatest  in  politics 
because  no  constant  reminder  is 
found  there  of  a  spiritual  purpose. 
It  is  thought  to  be  bad  taste  to 
speak  of  religious  conviction  on  the 


44        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

platform,  as  though  it  savoured  of 
cant,  and  as  though  politics  were 
irreligious.  That  is  perhaps  why 
there  is  a  revolt  against  "politics 
in  the  pulpit,"  a  feeling  that  some- 
how politics  are  lo*wer  in  motive, 
incongruous  almost  in  those  who 
stand  for  the  highest  ideals.  And 
it  is  true  that  in  political  contro- 
versies Christianity  has  lost  its] 
charity;  we  have  drawn  apart 
guiltily,  doubting  whether  we  do 
not  need  a  new  consciousness  of 
the  forgotten  life;  a  rediscovery  of 
the  common  ground,  instead  of 
hard  words.  While  we  were  fall- 
ing foul  of  one  another  the  world 
has  been  wondering  how  these 
Christians  love  one  another. 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        45 

What  can  we  do  to  remove  our 
divisions?  We  can  examine  and 
suspect  our  strongest  party  convic- 
tions and  ask  ourselves  how  we 
came  by  them ;  what  ground  in  our 
faith  we  have  for  them;  and 
whether  that  faith  excludes  the 
opponent's  view.  And  is  our  mo- 
tive pure,  or  is  it  complicated  with 
business  interests  ?  Or  are  we  fol- 
lowing a  cry?  In  the  end,  do  we 
support  this  measure  or  that,  this 
party  programme  or  another,  only 
because  it  is  for  the  advantage  of 
the  Kingdom?  Are  ours  those 
spiritual  politics  which  lay  up  eter- 
nal gain,  or  have  they  only  a  mortal 
ideal? 

We  can  encourage  in  ourselves 


46        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

and  others  the  open  mind  and  heart, 
to  try  and  understand  the  outlook 
and  convictions  of  others,  and 
never  to  hate  nor  despise  those  who 
differ  from  us.  The  open  mind 
and  heart  will  mean  open  speech. 
We  shall  not  be  afraid  to  talk  poli- 
tics with  the  Christian  of  the  other 
party,  nor  be  ashamed  to  let  him 
see  that  politics  are  more  to  us  than 
party  spirit,  though  simply  and 
without  suspicion  of  cant:  neither 
shall  we  be  pharisaical.  We  shall 
not  be  disappointed.  The  Chris- 
tian in  him  responds ;  we  shall  come 
to  understand  each  other,  at  last  it 
will  end  in  common  action. 

We  shall  not  be  afraid  of  our 
own   party,   though   they   call   us 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        47 

lukewarm  and  unpractical.  Only 
spiritual  results  are  practical. 
Death  makes  all  other  ends  fool- 
ishness. Besides,  the  Kingdom  is 
first  and  last  for  us.  There  must 
always  be  parties,  but  we  have  no 
use  for  the  spirit  which  in  practice 
admits  no  good;  not  even  in  the  bet- 
ter man,  on  the  other  side. 

We  can  pray  and  talk  together, 
whatever  our  politics  may  be,  or 
our  social  condition.  When  men 
pray  together  in  simple  sincerity 
there  can  be  no  bitterness  in  their 
talk;  underneath  the  outward  dif- 
ference the  inward  community 
makes  us  sure  of  one  another. 
There  is  one  life,  though  it  express 
itself  in  many  forms,  and  for  all  of 


48        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

us  the  Kingdom  is  at  hand.  We 
would  discover  together  how  to 
make  it  a  real  presence.  As  we  be- 
come sure  of  one  another  there  will 
grow  up  a  common  will  among 
those  who  have  seen  the  two  worlds 
and  believe  that  politics  are  the 
quest  of  character  and  not  of  pos- 
sessions. 

It  is  not  a  dream:  it  has  been 
proved  strangely  easy  for  Chris- 
tians of  opposite  extremes  to  come 
together  under  a  common  loyalty 
to  Jesus  and  work  out  their  social 
duty.  Perhaps  it  is  still  too  early 
for  programmes;  but  we  know 
what  we  have  to  face  together. 


IV 

"Blessed  are  Ye  Foot" 

BUT  is  there  in  the  teaching 
of   Jesus    any    foreshadow- 
ing of  a  social  ideal?     What  had 
He  to  say  about  how  men  should 
live  rightly  together? 

Consider  what  He  taught,  about 
poverty  and  riches.  "Blessed  are 
the  poor  in  spirit" :  happy  are  they, 
whether  rich  or  poor,  who  have  no 
heart  for  riches,  whose  spirit  is  at 
liberty  for  the  inward  life.  Un- 
happy are  they,  whether  poor  or 
rich,  whose  soul  falls  under  the 

49 


50        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

glamour    of    possessions    and    is 
turned  away  from  God. 

But  there  is  another  rendering 
of  the  same  saying — "Blessed  are 
ye  poor":  "Blessed  are  ye  that 
hunger  now":  as  though  Jesus  in- 
tended an  even  higher  counsel  of 
perfection;  that  even  if  a  man  can 
be  sure  of  his  own  heart,  yet  it  is 
best  to  be  poor  in  fact ;  as  He  Him- 
self was,  and  as  the  great  saints 
were.  It  is  a  hard  saying,  but  the 
Christian  needs  above  all  to  per- 
suade himself  and  the  world  of  the 
truth  which  Jesus  taught,  even  as 
it  seems  to  us  to  extravagance,  that 
man's  whole  life  must  be  centred 
in  the  soul;  that  what  he  has  is 
nothing  to  be  compared  with  what 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        51 

he  is;  for  what  we  have  death 
takes  from  us,  but  what  we  are 
goes  with  us  always;  it  is  the 
treasure  laid  up  in  Heaven.  He 
meant,  simply  and  really,  what  He 
said.  Happy  are  the  poor,  in 
spirit  and  in  fact,  because  they  have 
only  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

We  have  been  afraid  to  profess 
His  teaching,  or  half-hearted  about 
it.  We  have  told  the  children  to 
get  on  in  life,  and  by  getting  on 
have  meant  getting  money,  or  mak- 
ing a  name  for  themselves.  When 
little  Anne,  passing  through  Cav- 
endish Square,  wished  that  she 
might  be  very  rich  like  the  great 
lady  in  the  chariot,  if  we  had  only 
told  the  truth  and  said  that  the 


52        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

charioted  lady  was  no  happier  than 
little  Anne !  little  Anne  would  have 
begun  to  give  up  wanting  chariots, 
to  her  eternal  advantage.  Happi- 
ness is  not  having,  but  being.  We 
used  to  commend  self-help  to  the 
poor,  but  never  made  it  plain  that 
self-help  does  not  mean  helping 
yourself  to  whatever  you  can  lay 
your  hands  on,  but  helping  your 
soul,  yourself.  Nor  yet  have  we 
raised  up  a  saner  generation  with 
an  ambition  to  be  somebody  in 
themselves,  not  somebody  in  the 
newspapers,  not  misled  into  scram- 
bling to  the  top  of  the  heap  anyhow. 
We  have  no  right  to  read  His 
comfortable  sayings  and  turn  over 
the  page  at  the  sixth  chapter  of  St. 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        53 

Luke's  Gospel;  nor  pass  it  by  as  a 
counsel  of  perfection.  He  bade  us 
be  perfect.  We  may  not  say  that 
it  can  never  be;  He  Himself  was 
very  poor,  and  many  others  in  His 
example.  It  is  a  plain  command, 
to  be  poor  in  spirit,  poor  in  fact. 

To  be  poor  in  spirit,  poor  in  fact 
— but  He  did  not  say :  Blessed  are 
the  halt,  the  maimed,  the  blind. 
He  spent  His  life  in  healing  them, 
and  called  their  disorders  the  work 
of  devils.  He  loved  that  poverty 
which  delivers  from  the  desire  of 
possessions  and  turns  men  to  God, 
but  He  never  praised  the  broken 
life.  He  would  not  have  com- 
mended the  condition  of  those  who 
to-day  are  crippled  by  inefficient 


54        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

bodies  or  overcrowding  and  long 
hours  of  work,  who,  but  for  the 
grace  of  God,  are  incapable  of 
abundant  life.  They  are  like  the 
blind  whose  eyes  He  opened,  be- 
cause they  can  have  no  eyes  nor 
heart  for  the  things  which  He 
said  were  more  than  meat  and 
drink.  They  can  never  hope  for 
the  opportunities  which  make  men 
whole,  but  go  under  and  die  and 
stand  before  the  throne  of  God  and 
tell  Him  that  they  never  had  a 
chance.  With  us  it  is  a  matter  of 
money,  and  they  have  no  money. 
There  are  eight  million  men  in 
Great  Britain,  for  instance,  whose 
average  wage  is  only  twenty-five 
shillings  (six  dollars)  a  week;  and 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        55 

it  is  a  fact,  surely  unrealised,-  that 
only  one-ninth  part  of  the  popula- 
tion of  that  country  belongs  to  fam- 
ilies whose  income  is  more  than 
£170  ($850.00)  a  year ;  not  to  speak 
of  the  destitute  sixteen  per  cent, 
of  the  people  of  Glasgow  living  in 
one-room  tenements  or  the  men 
and  women  sleeping  under  the  rail- 
way arches  and  in  the  parks  of  the 
cities  every  winter  night,  "naked 
and  sick  and  in  prison." 

He  did  not  say:  Be  poor,  and 
ignorant  and  unhealthy,  but :  "Be 
thou  made  whole.7'  If  we  make 
war  upon  ignorance  and  disease, 
much  more  did  He;  but  the  differ- 
ence is  that  we  try  to  deliver  our- 
selves by  forgetting  His  other  ideal, 


56        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

of  poverty;  by  growing  rich,  and 
out  of  our  wealth  buying  good  con- 
ditions; while  He  always  remem- 
bered the  deceit  of  possessions,  the 
fate  of  the  man  who  pulled  down 
his  barns  to  build  greater.  An 
added  evil  is  no  cure:  to  escape 
from  want  to  riches  is  to  pass  from 
one  danger  to  another.  While  we 
rightly  demand  good  conditions,  we 
have  to  keep  always  in  mind  every 
man's  need  of  poverty.  That  was 
His  thought,  however  strange  it 
seems;  that  men  should  be  whole, 
and  poor.  Somehow,  if  we  are  to 
stand  fast  in  His  thought,  we  have 
to  make  the  right  life  possible  with- 
out personal  possessions;  poverty 
possible  without  disability. 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        57 

It  is  not  so  now:  poverty  to- 
day is  a  curse  and  not  a  blessing. 
We  compel  men,  if  they  would  be 
whole,  to  struggle  for  the  personal 
possessions  which  He  forbade,  and 
we  deny  the  best  of  life  to  those 
who  obey  His  command  to  be  poor. 
Our  life  is  wrong;  for,  quite 
plainly — and  I  do  not  see  that  there 
is  any  honest  escape — to  His  mind 
the  ideal  is  a  poverty  which  enjoys 
the  right  conditions  which  to-day 
only  wealth  can  win ;  for  the  soul's 
sake:  and,  though  it  seems  all  but 
impossible,  it  must  be  the  Chris- 
tian's ideal  if  it  was  His.  Our 
politics  must  look  to  that  seem- 
ing impossibility  as  their  goal. 
Strange  it  may  be,  but  then  He  saw 


58        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

life  as  we  do  not  often  and  His 
ideals  become  ours  only  at  those 
highest  moments  when  we  forget 
what  at  other  times  we  call  our 
common  sense  and  rise  nearer  to 
the  level  of  His  consciousness. 
Jesus  went  to  the  heart  of  the  mat- 
ter :  it  is  good  to  be  poor,  to  be  de- 
livered from  the  desire  of  dying 
things,  for  the  soul's  sake :  and,  for 
the  soul's  sake,  no  man  must  live 
the  broken  life.  We  must  be  poor 
without  starvation  of  body  or  mind 
or  spirit;  poor  without  disability; 
somehow  so  change  our  ideals  and 
ways  that  it  shall  be  possible  to 
have  no  personal  wealth  to  lead  us 
astray,  and  still  to  lack  nothing  that 
is  necessary  to  the  perfect  life. 


V 

Right  Poverty 

AFTER  all,  that  is  the  nat- 
ural condition  of  God's 
creatures;  of  the  birds,  for  in- 
stance, whom  He  bade  us  consider. 
Theirs  is  the  holy  poverty  which 
had  no  personal  possessions.  But 
the  robin  who  nests  in  the  corner 
bush  has  no  disabilities ;  she  is  free 
of  the  wealth  of  all  my  garden  and 
my  neighbour's.  In  the  early  sum- 
mer, when  her  fledglings  are  hun- 
gry and  she  forgets  to  be  afraid, 
she  invades  my  house,  hops  on  the 

59 


60        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

breakfast  table,  and  helps  herself  to 
the  butter.  She  has  no  idea  of  de- 
privation. She  is  as  God  made 
her,  and  as,  I  suppose,  He  made 
man  to  be,  poor,  without  personal 
possessions;  but  she  lacks  nothing. 
The  whole  world  is  free  to  her. 

But  I  am  rich  unnaturally. 
There  is  a  fence  all  round  my  gar- 
den and  no  human  being  ventures 
in  without  my  permission.  Nature 
never  built  a  fence  in  all  the  history 
of  the  world,  but  she  gives  every- 
thing, land  and  water  and  air,  to 
every  creature.  When  I  buy  con- 
sols the  Bank  of  England  is  pre- 
pared with  a  ritual  administered  by 
a  multitude  of  obstructive  clerks  all 
to  prevent  any  other  person  from 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        61 

coming  near  the  little  bit  of  riches 
which  I  have  appropriated;  but 
there  is  no  such  exclusion  and  pos- 
session in  nature,  nor,  I  suppose, 
among  the  angels  of  God  in  the 
seven  heavens.  Every  natural 
creature,  though  it  possesses  noth- 
ing, enjoys  the  whole  world.  Man, 
in  his  societies,  alone  tries  to  be 
rich,  and  has  ended  in  making  him- 
self for  the  most  part  miserably 
poor. 

In  fact  humanity  has  turned 
down  a  blind  alley  of  social  evolu- 
tion away  from  nature's  path. 
Long  ago  nature  learned  all  that  is 
to  be  known  about  perfect  social 
conditions.  She  has  often  made 
happy  communities.  The  bees, 


62        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

who  live  by  instinct,  and  therefore 
by  the  direct  impulse  of  life,  long 
ago  created  the  communities  of 
which  we  dream,  where  every  mem- 
ber in  perfect  personal  poverty  en- 
joys the  whole  hive.  But  we  are 
still  involved  in  difficulties  because 
we  have  not  yet  rediscovered  the 
paradox  of  the  natural  life;  of  al- 
lowing to  every  man,  not  personal 
possession,  but  the  common  wealth. 
Doubtless  it  is  our  original  sin,  the 
desire  to  possess  the  creatures  for 
oneself,  of  which  the  mystics  speak 
as  the  origin  of  the  soul's  fall  from 
Heaven.  But  whether  we  ascend 
into  Heaven  for  origins  or  not,  at 
least  our  social  conditions  are  con- 
trary to  life's  practice;  and  con- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        63 

trary  to  the  thought  of  Jesus ;  and 
no  one  will  say  that  we  have  made 
of  them  anything  but  a  failure :  for 
our  riches  and  poverty  are  both 
wrong;  when  we  are  rich,  keeping 
our  wealth  to  ourselves,  how  hardly 
can  we  pass  through  the  needle's 
eye;  and  when  we  are  poor  good 
conditions  are  forbidden  us.  Each 
for  himself  is  forced  to  get  what  he 
can  of  the  world's  opportunities. 
Life  becomes  a  struggle ;  an  uncon- 
scious enmity  with  other  men;  un- 
happiness  to  the  Christian  who  has 
found  out  the  fact  and  knows 
how  poverty  makes  men  halt  and 
maimed  and  blind  of  soul.  Every- 
where his  failure  meets  him :  every 
man  he  meets  is  a  reproach. 


64        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

Early  astir  in  the  morning  is  the 
boy  who  goes  from  door  to  door  de- 
livering newspapers.  He  is  an  ex- 
ample which  walks  in  every  day 
through  our  gate,  not  an  extrava- 
gant case,  but  a  fair  instance,  of 
how  under  this  fate  of  personal 
possessions  life  is  crippled.  His 
clothes  are  poor,  his  boots  rather 
worse.  He  himself  looks  healthy, 
but  not  well-grown,  and  only  com- 
paratively washed.  He  hurries, 
when  he  catches  our  critical  eye,  be- 
cause he  should  get  home  to  go  to 
the  Public  School.  He  is  not  one 
of  the  outcasts  of  the  world  by  any 
means,  but  he  will  never  have  the 
chance  which  our  richer  children 
have.  At  sixteen  he  will  go  to 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        65 

work,  after  receiving  an  incomplete 
education  at  a  school  where  he  will 
not  have  met  the  best  boys  whose 
company  we  others  buy  for  our 
sons  if  we  can,  and  where  he  will 
not  have  learnt  those  manners 
which  we  believe  in  so  strongly. 
He  will  become  perhaps  an  office- 
boy,  doing  dull  work,  meeting  all 
kinds  of  men,  some  foul-mouthed, 
some  gamblers  and  drinkers,  and 
getting  home  too  tired  to  have  much 
interest  in  anything  else.  Pres- 
ently he  will  rise  to  be  a  clerk,  with 
better  wages  and  hours,  but  sink- 
ing into  that  narrow  outlook  which 
is  the  inevitable  result  of  the  lives 
of  so  many  thousands  like  himself. 
The  half  of  his  possibilities  will 


66        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

never  be  aroused.  He  will  never 
be  what  he  might  have  been  if  train- 
ing at  the  great  school  and  the 
university,  where  life  and  thought 
are  set  before  us,  had  been  free  to 
all,  and  not  the  privilege  of  per- 
sonal riches.  True,  there  are  some 
who  do  a  great  deal  for  him.  He 
belongs  to  a  boys'  brigade  or  a  club, 
where  they  give  all  their  spare  time 
to  teaching  him  responsibility  and 
discipline  and  straight  living;  all 
good  indeed,  but  only  charity;  and 
perhaps  his  worst  fate  is  that  he 
will  not  rebel,  will  take  it  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course  that  he  had  no  better 
chance;  or  perhaps  will  fall  into 
that  last  evil  of  the  middle  class, 
will  look  down  on  those  less  for- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        67 

tunate  than  himself,  and  become  a 
snob  in  his  own  way.  A  narrow 
life,  and  there  are  thousands  who 
live  like  that. 

What  is  it  that  closes  the  world 
against  the  newsboy?  The  privi- 
lege of  personal  possessions:  the 
system  which  prevents  a  man  mak- 
ing the  best  of  himself  unless  he 
breaks  our  Lord's  command  to  be 
poor ;  the  loss,  even  from  our  politi- 
cal dreams,  of  the  natural  ideal 
of  poverty  without  disability.  In 
plain  words,  under  present  social 
conditions  a  man  can  hardly  be  a 
Christian.  He  must  offend,  how- 
ever much  against  his  will,  the 
greater  commandments  of  Jesus. 
If  he  is  rich,  how  hardly  can  he 


68       JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

escape  the  absorption  of  wealth,  or 
be  blessed  by  poverty.  If  he  is 
poor,  he  may  be  forced  to  starve 
the  mind  and  heart  with  which  men 
serve  and  love  God.  Our  social 
system  compels  him  to  failure. 

Consider  again:  what  we  have 
been  saying  may  seem  extravagant, 
but  it  is  a  matter  of  spiritual  life, 
and  they  were  not  strange  ideas  of 
our  own  which  we  were  using,  but 
the  thoughts  of  Jesus  about  how 
men  save  their  souls.  He  often 
spoke  of  the  danger  of  riches;  the 
anxiety  for  to-morrow;  that  we 
may  not  lay  by  enough  for  old  age 
and  bring  up  our  children  well. 
He  knew  how  that  trouble  grows 
into  an  absorption  of  the  whole  self 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        69 

and  leads  a  man  unconsciously  to 
live  as  though  life  were  a  matter  of 
getting  rich;  as  though  the  posses- 
sions which  every  man  must  one 
day  leave  behind  were  more  than 
character.  Or  at  least  that  fear  of 
wronging  and  disabling  those  near 
to  us  prevents  the  indifference  to 
riches  which  He  praised.  If  only 
we  could  be  poor  without  fear! 

But,  now,  if  it  were  possible,  if 
good  conditions  were  free  to  the 
poorest,  the  care  for  riches  which 
distracts  men  from  God  would  be 
past.  If  it  were  possible  to  build 
up  a  society  where  these  things 
were  not  bought  and  sold  but  were 
ours  and  every  man's  as  common 
wealth,  then  we  could  live  the  life 


70        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

He    praised;    in   perfect    personal 
poverty,  like  His  other  creatures. 

It  is  not  impossible.  It  is  al- 
ready realised  in  part.  Some  com- 
mon wealth,  of  bare  necessities, 
already  exists  among  us,  and  in- 
creases; there  are  not  a  few  good 
things  which  we  enjoy  .together, 
however  poor  we  are.  We  have 
only  to  go  on  as  we  have  begun, 
but  with  a  fuller  consciousness  of 
purpose.  For  whether  we  desired 
it  or  not,  the  spirit  of  Jesus  has  been 
abroad  and  has  been  speaking  in 
unexpected  places.  The  ideal  of 
personal  wealth  is  a  little  shaken 
now.  It  occurs  to  us  that  the  pur- 
suit of  it  is  not  so  admirable.  The 
eager  money-getter  is  conscious  of 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        71 

it  himself,  and  defends  himself  on 
the  ground  that  his  wealth  employs 
and  benefits  others.  He  finds  it 
necessary  to  excuse  himself,  and 
there  are  some  always  ready  to  de- 
mand his  defence.  He  cannot  say 
simply  that  his  wealth  is  his  and 
he  can  do  what  he  likes  with  it. 
Personal  possessions  are  no  longer 
sacred.  There  is  the  income-tax, 
for  instance,  and  death  duties :  they 
take  away  our  personal  possessions 
and  pay  them  into  a  common 
wealth.  The  rates  and  taxes  pro- 
vide that  part  of  the  world  and  its 
privileges  which  is  open  to  every 
one;  the  right  to  personal  safety, 
through  the  military  and  police 
forces;  the  means  of  communica- 


72       JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

tion,  through  the  Post  Office  and 
highways;  and  some  education, 
through  primary  and  secondary 
schools.  These  are  the  things 
which  already  any  man  may  enjoy 
however  poor  he  is,  created  by  the 
limitation  of  personal  riches.  The 
established  principles  of  taxation 
tend  towards  the  ideal  which 
seemed  so  far  off,  and  the  move- 
ment which  may  have  been  uncon- 
scious is  becoming  deliberate. 
There  is  talk  of  increasing  the  com- 
mon wealth,  of  extending  public 
education,  and  housing  reform,  and 
provision  for  old  age  and  against 
sickness  and  want  of  work,  by  the 
establishment  of  public  funds  and 
by  nationalisation,  or  by  increasing 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        73 

the  powers  of  the  community  to  in- 
terfere with  personal  property. 
The  common  wealth,  the  possibility 
of  enjoying  good  conditions,  and 
still  being  poor,  grows  always 
larger.  As  the  ideals  of  to-day 
come  to  realisation  we  shall  be  very 
near  conditions  under  which  we 
shall  be  poor  without  disability. 

The  movement  is  obvious,  but  we 
need  to  make  it  conscious,  deliber- 
ate. The  Christian  logic  of  it  is 
clear.  Only  by  taxing  and  limiting 
our  private  possessions  and  by  pro- 
viding a  common  wealth  with 
which  to  establish  healthy  condi- 
tions and  wider  education,  and  op- 
portunity free  to  the  poorest,  can 
the  world  be  opened  to  the  less  for- 


74        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

tunate  of  our  fellows.  To  com- 
plete what  is  already  begun  we 
shall  indeed  have  to  give  up  still 
more  of  our  personal  possessions, 
deliberately,  to  the  common  wealth ; 
but  that  is  the  happy  way  of  finding 
poverty.  But  it  would  be  a  pov- 
erty which  is  not  destitution,  be- 
cause the  common  wealth  would  be 
ours  as  every  one's.  And  if  we  see 
the  two  worlds  as  Jesus  did,  and 
realise  that  for  the  soul's  sake 
which  lives  beyond  bodily  death  it 
matters  immensely  whether  men  are 
starved  in  body  or  mind,  or  full- 
grown  to  live  out  the  best  in  them, 
then  we  are  not  guiltless  until  we 
are  glad  to  be  poor  with  all  men, 
and  rich,  with  them,  in  common. 


VI 

"Blessed  Are  the  Meek" 

AGAIN,  He  said:  "Blessed 
are  the  merciful"; 
"Blessed  are  the  meek" — the  sons 
of  God,  and  the  inheritors  of  the 
earth — and  disclosed  a  political 
economy  altogether  revolutionary. 
The  meek  tradesmen  goes  into  the 
bankruptcy  court :  the  merciful  em- 
ployer makes  little  profits.  If  big 
men  and  small  men  in  the  City  of 
London  were  all  meek  and  merciful 
together,  and  every  lawyer  turned 
the  other  cheek  and  agreed  quickly 

75 


76        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

with  his  adversary  while  in  the  way 
with  him,  and  if  every  stock-broker 
mercifully  told  every  other  broker 
all  that  he  knew  about  a  stock,  the 
foundations  of  commerce  would  be 
shaken.  And  yet  these  few  words 
mean  that  and  more.  With  the 
simplicity  of  those  who  have  seen 
the  heart  of  things,  Jesus  pro- 
claimed a  morality  contradictory 
to  the  fundamental  laws  of  evolu- 
tion. This  world  was  made,  not  by 
mercy  and  meekness,  but  by  nature 
red  in  tooth  and  claw ;  by  the  sur- 
vival of  the  strongest,  and  by  fierce 
competition;  and  human' society  has 
grown  up  out  of  battle  and  murder 
and  sudden  death:  the  miracle  is, 
not  that  there  is  so  much  that  is  un- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        77 

merciful  and  fierce  in  the  earning 
of  our  bread,  but  that  there  is  in 
it  any  pity  and  love  at  all.  What 
there  may  be  began  from  Jesus. 
Hardly  could  our  faith  venture  to 
believe  in  a  new  economy  unless  we 
had  already  seen  His  work  upon  the 
world. 

More  immediately  our  commer- 
cial system  is  the  outcome  of  the 
last  century  of  laissez  faire.  Lib- 
eralism sixty  years  ago  held  that 
every  man  must  be  free  to  exercise 
his  abilities  and  wealth  unre- 
strained, except  from  crime:  give 
men  liberty,  it  was  said,  and  the 
deserving  will  rise  to  the  top.  But 
so  did  the  cruel  and  hard  of  heart. 
They  compelled  young  children  to 


78        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

work  in  factories,  and  women  to 
haul  coal  all  but  naked  in  mines. 
And  there  was  room  for  only  a  few 
in  the  high  places ;  the  rest  went  un- 
der; until  the  merciful  could  bear 
it  no  longer  and  a  great  agitation 
forced  the  community  to  become,  in 
the  person  of  the  factory  inspector 
or  arbitrator  of  trade  disputes,  the 
visible  conscience  of  Christian 
morality.  But  we  are  still  com- 
pelled, lest  we  starve,  to  live  by  the 
loss  of  others.  As  we  go  up,  they 
go  down:  as  we  get  custom,  they 
often  lose  it.  Our  good  bargains 
are  their  failures.  We  win  our 
suit  and  they  pay  the  costs ;  every- 
where there  are  people  struggling 
for  the  same  small  job.  If  we 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        79 

were  really  merciful  we  should  for- 
give every  debtor  his  debt — as  God 
forgives  us;  should  never  go  to  a 
bargain-sale ;  never  try  to  cut  out  a 
trade  rival ;  never  do  the  very  many 
things  which  every  one  does,  and  by 
the  not  doing  of  which  the  real 
Christian  stands  convicted  as  an  ec- 
centric. The  world  has  still  very 
little  use  for  His  perfect  men,  ex- 
cept perhaps  in  the  monastery  or 
the  workhouse. 

The  Christian  who  sees  life  as 
the  concern  of  the  soul  can  only 
say:  So  much  the  worse  for  the 
world ;  that  way  man  goes  down  to 
the  beasts.  He  hates  every  form 
of  war  and  is  eager  to  find  the 
escape  from  individualism  and 


8o        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

from  the  old  law  of  the  survival  of 
brute  strength  and  cunning,  in  com- 
merce and  business,  because  he  is  a 
Christian  and  not  the  slave  of  the 
world. 

The  immorality  of  the  com- 
mercial system  is  a  common-place 
theme,  and  I  am  not  trying  to  per- 
suade the  convinced.  But  there 
are  Christians  to  whom  the  bless- 
ing of  mercy  and  meekness  still 
seems  only  a  domestic  matter;  a 
commendation  of  gentleness  in  con- 
duct and  restraint  of  temper;  say- 
ing kind  words  and  kindly  doing. 
But  the  Christian  life  is  not  so  par- 
tial and  tame.  It  is  heroic.  It 
saves  the  world,  man  in  all  his  rela- 
tions :  in  business,  as  at  home ;  and 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        81 

no  one  can  be  perfectly  Christian 
in  an  unchristian  world,  nor  divide 
his  life  and  be  safe.  Mercy  must 
become  possible  in  every  relation. 

How  that  may  be  has,  of  course, 
long  occupied  men's  thoughts. 
The  root  evil  is  known  to  be  in- 
dividualism, the  "each  for  himself." 
One  need  not  insist  upon  it:  it  is 
the  necessity  of  looking  after  one- 
self against  others  which  makes 
men  merciless  and  violent.  We 
feel  that  we  have  to  live;  and  to 
live  must  hustle;  and  if  we  hustle, 
some  one  goes  to  the  wall. 

But  now,  it  is  possible,  under  cir- 
cumstances, to  be  diligent  in  busi- 
ness, to  do  with  all  our  might  what 
our  hand  finds  to  do,  and  still  not  to 


82        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

hurt  any  one  else.  For  example,  in 
any  large  concern,  every  manager 
and  clerk,  from  the  top  to  the  bot- 
tom, may  work  with  all  his  might 
at  his  particular  duty  and  do  no  in- 
jury to  another  clerk  at  his  differ- 
ent duty.  On  the  contrary,  the 
good  work  of  one  helps  the  other; 
and  the  good  work  of  all  prospers 
the  business:  and  if  the  business 
prospers  all  share  in  its  prosperity, 
for  wages  rise  and  there  are 
bonuses  or  a  share  in  profits  for 
each.  Internally  a  business  need 
never  be  a  strife,  but  is  often  a  mu- 
tual benefit.  It  is  an  organism,  a 
single  life;  a  body  and  members 
who  enjoy  its  good  health.  The 
concern  in  itself  may  have  a  real 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        83 

Christian  morality :  a  score  of  men, 
or  even  hundreds,  living  together 
in  one  interest.  Only  externally, 
in  the  rivalry  of  business  with  busi- 
ness, does  the  struggle  continue. 

But  now  once  more,  the  business 
may  combine,  by  agreeing  prices 
and  outputs,  with  other  concerns, 
to  limit  their  rivalry;  or  a  trust  is 
formed  to  control  perhaps  several 
combinations.  While  the  trust 
may  still  be  at  war  with  the  public 
or  with  another  trust,  the  little 
group  has  been  enlarged  into  a  mul- 
titude; all  released  from  the  fiercer 
forms  of  competition,  by  a  com- 
munity of  interest.  Not,  maybe, 
with  any  conscious  Christian  im- 
pulse, the  movement  indicates  a 


84        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

way  of  salvation.  Not  long  ago 
the  Scotch  railways  were  in  keen 
rivalry,  cutting  rates,  racing,  and 
damaging  each  other's  profits. 
Now,  under  a  measure  of  under- 
standing, conference  of  managers, 
and  a  general  railway  policy,  their 
competition  ceases.  As  by  absorp- 
tion in  a  common  concern  it  is  pos- 
sible in  the  small  business  for  a  few 
men  to  live  together  Christianly,  so 
for  a  greater  number  in  a  greater 
organisation;  and  for  a  very  large 
number  under  the  largest  combina- 
tions. 

Then,  to  bring  about  the  same 
release  from  the  evils  of  un- 
restrained individualism  in  all  busi- 
ness, to  create  a  commercial  mercy 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        85 

national  in  extent,  there  needs  only 
the  last,  and  logical,  and  seemingly 
inevitable,  step  to  a  general  control 
of  trade,  a  combining  of  all  com- 
binations, every  business  combina- 
tion and  trust,  in  their  ascending 
order,  under  one  ultimate  direction 
making  the  trade  of  the  country, 
not  a  battlefield  of  contending  in- 
terests, but  an  organism  in  which 
each  plays  its  part,  its  good  work 
helping  the  good  work  of  every 
other,  and  the  common  success  be- 
coming the  common  profit,  as  al- 
ready it  is  in  each  lesser  concern. 
We  wait  only  for  the  extension  of 
the  principle  upon  which  every  busi- 
ness is  worked  to  trade  as  a  whole ; 
for  the  last  conquest  by  the  spirit 


86        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

of  community  as  against  unmerci- 
ful self-interest. 

That  may  appear  distant  and  too 
simple  to  be  true.  But  commerce 
moves  that  way.  Competition  is 
compelling  combination.  Unre- 
stricted individualism  has  worked 
itself  out  during  the  last  hundred 
years  until  it  has  become  unwork- 
able. It  is  dying  of  its  own  re- 
sults. Everywhere  there  is  either 
a  looking  for  a  change,  or  already 
a  new  method;  where  the  traveller 
finds  it  always  harder  to  get  orders 
against  cut  prices,  and  the  Courts 
are  full  of  small  trade-debtors :  and 
on  the  other  hand,  where  the  capi- 
talist forms  his  great  amalgama- 
tions, or  the  workman  talks  of  Syn- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        87 

dicalism;  both  that  they  may  put 
an  end  to  disastrous  competition, 
for  different  purposes  no  doubt,  in 
a  community  of  interests.  The 
business  man  has  begun  to  expect  a 
change  and  to  use  new  methods. 
The  last  step  may  still  be  far  dis- 
tant; but  it  is  not  difficult  to  see 
the  coming  of  commercial  com- 
munism, through  combinations, 
working  arrangements,  trusts,  syn- 
dicalism, co-partnerships,  munic- 
ipal trading.  All  are  signs  of  the 
search  for  mercy. 

But  they  say:  If  you  destroy 
the  each-for-himself,  you  remove 
the  impulse  which  forces  the  best 
man  to  the  top:  you  are  flying  in 
the  face  of  nature,  which  made  the 


88        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

world  by  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
The  reply  crowds  in:  The  strong 
man  works  because  he  must,  be- 
cause his  force  of  character  must 
have  its  outlet;  because  his  ability 
carries  him  to  command.  But  he 
will  work  as  thoroughly  for  the 
community  as  for  himself;  at  the 
head  of  a  national  army  or  navy,  as 
well  as  in  his  private  interest.  It 
is  not  self-seeking,  but  force  of 
character  which  makes  him  great. 
The  Christian  morality  does  not 
wish  him  weak  and  careless,  but 
strenuous  for  the  community.  Put 
it  to  a  very  simple  test:  Is  your 
best  work  done  for  money,  or  be- 
cause you  love  it  ?  And  if  it  is  true 
that  the  natural  law  requires  men 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        89 

to  fight  for  their  own  hand  and  con- 
verts society  into  a  jungle  of  wild 
beasts,  if  that  is  the  law  of  the 
world,  then  Jesus  said:  "My 
Kingdom  is  not  of  this  world/' 
"Thy  Kingdom  come,"  and  Chris- 
tianity has  to  bring  another  law 
into  real  expression  here.  It  has 
to  find  the  political  path  by  which 
mercy  and  meekness  may  go  to 
inherit  the  earth.  Individualism, 
self-interest,  is  its  enemy:  the 
growing  spirit  of  community  its 
hope. 


VII 
"As  Thyself" 

"T|^LESSED  are  ye  poor"  and 
JD  "Blessed  are  the  meek" 
both  seem  to  imply  common  wealth 
and  common  control,  and  so  does 
that  third  saying,  "Thou  shalt  love 
thy  neighbour  as  thyself,"  in  which 
He  agreed  that  the  whole  duty  of 
man  to  man  is  summed  up.  "As 
thyself" — then  there  must  be  abso- 
lute equality  between  myself  and 
my  neighbour  in  all  opportunity. 
The  two  words  kill  every  privilege, 
of  birth  or  class.  How  can  we  be 

loving  him  as  ourself  while  we  con- 
go 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        91 

sent  to  his  lack  and  to  our  unequal 
excess?  As  myself,  bred  in  sun- 
light and  gentleness,  while  he  was 
nursed  on  the  door-step  in  ugly 
streets  ?  And  if  we  look  back  upon 
the  shining  days  on  the  field,  the 
great  hours  with  books,  the  talk  in 
common-rooms  where  we  grew  to 
ideals  and  saw  visions  which  have 
always  gone  with  us;  the  things 
which  so  many  others  never  saw 
nor  heard ;  the  things  we  never  con- 
nected with  such  as  they  are,  until 
afterwards  we  found  them  and 
knew  them  and  realised  their  lack 
of  what  is  precious  to  any  man ;  we 
begin  to  think  that  our  life,  uncon- 
sciously, was  an  indifference,  little 
better  than  hate  of  our  neighbour. 


92        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

"As  thyself"  is  fundamental  and 
simple:  a  love  which  walks  equally 
with  the  fisherman  and  the  rich 
ruler :  a  will  that  any  man  should  be 
as  we  have  been  at  our  highest ;  the 
determination  to  disperse  those  old- 
worldly  vanities  which  love  them- 
selves without  even  a  sense  of  hu- 
mour, as  though,  really,  Heaven 
and  Earth  and  the  Waters  under 
the  Earth  were  created  as  a  stage 
for  the  little  family  on  the  edge  of 
"society,"  or  for  the  bundle  of 
sables  driving  down  Fifth  Avenue. 

"As  thyself";  then  every  man 
must  have  the  health,  and  housing, 
and  education -which  we  have  had. 
But  when  we  come  to  work  for  it 
how  can  it  be?  We  are  not  rich 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        93 

enough,  nor  influential  enough,  to 
provide  a  life  like  the  best  for  all. 
Even  if  we  subscribe  to  funds  the 
money  is  poured  into  a  bottomless 
sea.  Even  if  half  society  set  about 
lifting  up  the  have-nots  to  an  equal 
level  of  privilege,  the  other  half 
would  still  bear  them  down.  No 
individual  however  powerful  and 
generous  is  equal  to  the  task  of  re- 
making the  sad  conditions  of  the 
unprivileged.  It  can  never  be  the 
work  of  private  living  nor  effort. 
If  we  are  ever  to  love  our  neigh- 
bour as  ourself,  really  and  practi- 
cally, it  will  only  be  by  creating  a 
public  opinion  which  can  make  the 
Christian  ideal  a  reality,  as  we  in 
our  individual  weakness  never  can. 


94        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

It  will  only  be  by  creating,  and  sub- 
mitting to,  the  paramount  power  of 
a  Christianised  state,  which  shall 
give  every  one  freely  all  that  isi 
necessary  for  the  full  development 
of  his  life.  Neither  you  nor  I 
alone  can  ever  set  up  the  new  condi- 
tions under  which  we  could  feel 
that  others  were  in  fact  living  as 
ourselves.  But  we  can  work  and 
compel  the  community  towards  a 
common  wealth,  where  I  shall  have 
no  more  privilege  than  another, 
and  he  no  more  than  I. 

I  am  not  one  of  the  Utopia-build- 
ers. They  have  all  been  false 
prophets,  because  the  world  grows 
its  own  way.  Society  is  not  a  ma- 
chine of  which  one  lays  down  a 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        95 

plan  and  builds  to  it,  but  an  organ- 
ism, which  grows,  like  a  tree,  by 
the  spirit  in  it;  which  indeed  we 
may  feed  and  cultivate  well  or  ill, 
according  to  our  understanding  of 
its  life,  but  whose  form  in  perfec- 
tion no  one  can  foretell.  While, 
then,  one  may  see  the  progress  and 
tendency  of  social  life,  how  it  is 
passing  from  individualism  to- 
wards community,  it  is  not  possi- 
ble to  describe  its  final  form;  how 
exactly  we  shall  be  governed,  how 
live  together ;  how  work  out  the  de- 
tail of  our  salvation.  The  tree  of 
social  evolution  puts  forth  a  branch 
here  and  a  leaf  there.  New  Acts 
pf  Parliament  or  Congress  open  up 
a  larger  liberty;  fixing  a  minimum 


96        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

wage;  freeing  a  larger  education. 
It  grows  here  a  little,  and  there  a 
little.  But  until  it  is  full-grown  no 
one  knows  what  it  will  be,  alto- 
gether and  complete.  Only  there 
seems  to  be  a  becoming,  a  growing 
into  the  general  likeness  of  our 
hope.  The  next  advance  will  re- 
veal itself,  and  the  final  perfection, 
in  its  own  time. 

I  suppose  that  it  is  grave  sin  in 
the  Christian  to  pray  "Thy  King- 
dom come"  and  disbelieve  that  his 
Lord's  will  must  revolutionise  so- 
ciety. But,  in  darker  moods,  our 
slowness  of  heart  makes  the  hope 
all  but  incredible.  Perhaps  for  a 
hundred  who  are  ready  a  thousand 
live  by  catch-words  and  prejudices, 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        97 

reheard  and  repeated,  while  God's 
truth  goes  by  unnoticed.  To  shake 
the  sleeper  only  rouses  him  to  ill- 
temper.  So  often  one  hears  the 
bitterness  of  those  who  will  not 
wake.  Or  comforts  drag  men 
back.  Perhaps  the  money  is  breed- 
ing money  in  business,  and  they  be- 
gin to  spend  and  give,  and,  with  no 
consciously  selfish  motive,  resent 
the  pushing  and  overturning  of 
others;  their  heart  hardens,  with- 
out their  knowing  it,  against  what 
may  behind  it  have  the  spirit  of 
Jesus.  The  thorns  spring  up  and 
choke  them.  Or  some  would  be 
still  fighting  the  old  battles,  fought 
and  won  already,  and  are  not 
easily  drawn  on  to  other  fellow- 


98        JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

ships.  The  old  ways  which 
brought  them  stern  victories  seem 
more  manly  than  the  newer  ap- 
proaches and  understandings  in  the 
churches  or  politics;  seem  suspect, 
and  a  little  disloyal  in  their  eyes. 
Or,  the  dead-weight  of  customs, 
and  inbred  attitudes  of  class  and 
tradition  which  only  die  out  with 
the  generation  which  lives  by  them, 
hold  back  the  current.  It  must  sap 
imperceptibly  and  even  then  the 
stream  flows  thinly.  It  is  as 
though  it  were  the  nature  of  life 
to  tire  and  harden  into  immovable 
forms  as  its  outbursts  die  away. 
Or,  there  is  that  impenetrability  of 
mind,  with  its  excuses,  in  hosts, 
bad  and  indifferent,  against  the  ex- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS        99 

tension  of  privilege:  The  poor 
are  all  drunken  blackguards :  Any 
man  by  industry  and  thrift  can  rise 
to  the  top :  Why  spoil  the  children 
with  pianos,  and  the  immigrant  la- 
borers with  baths?  Why  make 
men  discontented?  Why  stir  up 
class  hatreds?  Why  talk  about 
the  good  of  the  soul  when  no  one 
knows  anything  about  God  and  Im- 
mortality and  spirit? — a  favourite 
unreason  of  those  who  never  tried 
to  learn.  Why  busy  oneself  about 
such  things,  when  life  can  be  lived 
comfortably?  The  spirit  of  prog- 
ress has  to  contend  against  so  many 
ignorances  and  insensibilities. 
Sometimes  it  seems  incredible  that 
society  can  become  Christian. 


ioo      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

Yet  anything  is  possible  to  faith : 
and  faith  is  not  believing  in  the  ob- 
viously impossible,  but  an  energy 
from  an  inexhaustible  source.  It 
is  will  and  mind  inspired  of  God. 
It  does  move  the  mountains  of  in- 
ertia. When  belief  penetrates  a 
life  it  is  very  ready  to  spread,  and 
begins  to  work  itself  out  into  rea- 
son, and  so  to  desire  and  will;  and 
presently  the  man  of  faith  finds 
himself  speaking  of  it;  and,  per- 
haps to  his  surprise,  others  respond, 
and  the  company  grows  and  or- 
ganises and  becomes  a  great  power 
which  gathers  up  all  kinds  of  peo- 
ple, so  that  to-day  in  nearly  every 
civilised  country  or  in  worlds  lately 
heathen  a  belief  in  a  new  brother- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS      101 

hood,  equal  and  pacific,  undermines 
the  old  order  and  shakes  men  out 
of  their  comfort.  The  new  spirit 
is  overturning  the  world.  Call  it 
what  you  will — it  may  be  mixed 
with  bad  motives,  dangerous  in  its 
excesses — but  if  this  thing  were  not 
from  God  He  would  have  brought 
it  to  nought.  And  if  the  coming  of 
the  Kingdom  tarries  because  of  the 
hardness  of  our  hearts,  God's  pa- 
tience is  the  sign  of  final  assurance. 
If  He  were  not  sure  of  victory  He 
would  not  have  spared  the  world  so 
long. 

But  if  it  still  seems  incredible 
and  impossible  that  our  faith 
should  compel  us  to  rebuild  so- 
ciety upon  another  foundation,  if  it 


102      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

startles  us  as  an  immediate  politi- 
cal aim,  then  have  we  indeed  suf- 
fered the  great  change  of  mind 
which  subverts  the  whole  world? 
Maybe  we  have  become  converted 
towards  God;  but  is  our  mind 
changed  towards  men?  Have  the 
words  of  Jesus  about  loving  one's 
neighbour  as  oneself  burnt  them- 
selves into  life,  as  though  Jesus 
really  meant  what  He  said,  that  we 
are  to  love  our  neighbour,  really 
and  practically,  as  ourself,  no  soft 
amiability — Jesus  was  not  a  senti- 
mentalist— but  a  will  of  the  whole 
man  to  insist,  by  overturning  so- 
ciety, if  need  be,  that  every  one 
shall  have  all  that  the  Christian 
knows  to  be  lovable  and  good  for 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       103 

himself?  That  Jesus  meant,  with- 
out qualification,  that  there  must  be 
actual  equality  in  every  good  thing 
between  ourselves  and  the  most 
unfortunate  of  men?  Has  His 
thought  so  gone  with  us  always,  so 
changed  the  world  for  us,  that  the 
practical  failure  of  our  neighbour- 
love  troubles  us  all  day  long  and 
we  cannot  rest  until  society  is  re- 
made and  it  is  possible  to  be  com- 
pletely Christian?  And  do  we 
really  want  to  be  poor  and  earn  that 
blessing?  And  really  want  to 
share  the  best  of  life  with  all?  If 
not,  is  our  Christianity  more  than 
sentiment?  Have  we  dared  to 
fathom  the  whole  mind  of  Jesus 
and  to  make  it  our  political  ideal? 


vin 

Duties 

THE  teaching  of  Jesus  seems, 
then,  to  look  towards  com- 
mon wealth;  the  condition  under 
which  it  will  be  possible  to  be  poor 
without  starving  life;  to  be  merci- 
ful in  business;  and  really  to  be 
loving  our  neighbour  as  ourself. 
For  when  society  has  taken  the  con- 
trol of  wealth  so  far  into  its  own 
hands,  men  could  live  out  their  life, 
live  out  their  soul,  be  neither  halt 
nor  maimed  nor  blind,  and  still  be 

poor :  and  when  it  has  so  controlled 
104 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       105 

trade  that  every  worker  serves,  not 
himself,  nor  a  private  master,  but 
the  community,  self-interest  in 
trade  would  cease — an  ideal,  very 
distant  no  doubt,  but  we  are  none 
the  less  conscious  of  a  trend  that 
way.  The  Liberal,  putting  for- 
ward the  reforms  which  the  occa- 
sion seems  to  require,  is  no  longer 
the  individualist  of  earlier  days  who 
left  personal  liberty  and  competi- 
tion to  work  out  their  social  results ; 
experience  has  shown  him  the 
necessity,  in  some  measure,  large 
or  small,  of  state  control,  over 
hours  of  work,  and  conditions  and 
wages;  over  the  possession  of 
wealth  itself.  He  is  in  the  stream 
which  moves  towards  common 


106      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

wealth.  So  conservatism  has  be- 
come a  troubled  consciousness  of 
the  real  existence  and  power  of  the 
same  movement.  Whether  we  fear 
it,  or  whether  we  see  in  it  the  sign 
of  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  upon  earth,  it  is  the  pre- 
occupation of  political  thought  to- 
day. 

Self-interest  enters  largely  into 
our  feeling.  An  income  dimin- 
ished by  the  taxation  which  is 
building  the  common  wealth  makes 
the  movement  a  personal  concern. 
Perhaps  there  is  some  relief  to 
reluctance  in  the  thought  that  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  grows  like  the 
little  yeast  in  the  loaf.  Not  sud- 
denly will  it  overturn  society,  and 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       107 

maybe  there  is  always  room  for 
those  who  dread  to  go  too  fast. 
They  are  the  brake  which  prevents 
the  speed  which  overturns  the  car 
of  state.  But  yet,  to  hang  back 
too  much,  to  be  too  little  willing,  has 
its  great  dangers.  "The  wind 
bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and  thou 
nearest  the  sound  thereof,  but 
canst  not  tell  whence  it  cometh, 
and  whither  it  goeth."  The  force 
is  always  gathering,  the  pressure 
rising;  in  discontents,  strikes,  mur- 
murings :  and  if  there  be  no  outlet 
the  explosion  will  wreck  all  that 
caution  wished  to  save.  For  it  is 
obvious,  very  disquieting,  that  the 
discontent  of  those  who  have  dis- 
covered that  they  might  have  much 


io8      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

that  the  rich  man  enjoys  grows 
louder,  with  a  note  of  anger,  and 
that  it  becomes  always  more  con- 
scious of  its  power.  To  beat  back 
the  tide  is  foolishness:  besides,  we 
may  be  fighting  against  God.  He 
may  this  way  be  leading  us  back 
from  our  fallen  selfishness  to  the 
original  unity. 

But  if  willingly,  or  unwillingly, 
sooner  or  later,  the  Christian  hon- 
estly trying  to  understand  the  mind 
of  Jesus  is  forced  to  think  that  his 
political  idea  must  be  some  such 
condition  as  this,  then  there  are  im- 
mediate duties  before  him.  First, 
to  see  his  own  property  and  a  com- 
mon wealth,  with  mercy  and  neigh- 
bour-love, steadfastly  and  clearly  as 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       109 

the  ideal;  to  become  accustomed 
to.  the  thought  until,  losing  all  its 
strangeness  and  fear  and  gathering 
its  proof  from  daily  events  and  the 
better  understood  life  and  words  of 
Jesus  and  His  nearer  followers,  it 
grows  welcome  and  reasonable,  as 
old  habits  of  thought  fall  away: 
then,  to  be  himself  poor  in  spirit, 
poor  so  far  as  possible  now  in  fact ; 
merciful  too  and  loving;  and,  last, 
to  put  himself  right  politically. 

Of  the  first  little  perhaps  need  be 
further  said.  A  new  thought,  a 
thought  perhaps  unwelcome,  when 
it  has  become  familiar,  changes  its 
appearance.  Because  it  is  hard  it 
is  all  the  better  as  an  ideal.  Liv- 
ing much  with  us  it  grows  strangely 


i  io      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

simple.  We  begin  to  say:  Of 
course  He  meant  it,  and,  if  it  is  dif- 
ficult, what  more  likely?  "How 
very  hard  it  is  to  be  a  Christian." 

Of  the  second  duty  there  can  per- 
haps be  no  perfect  fulfilment  now. 
Any  Christian  may  be  poor  in 
spirit,  having  no  heart  for  riches; 
the  note  of  his  life  may  be  simplic- 
ity and  disregard  of  personal  ad- 
vantage. So  far  he  fulfils  the 
ideal  now.  For  it  comes  home  to 
him  with  a  pang  of  conscience, 
what  right  has  he  to  his  gay  house 
and  good  cheer  while  there  are 
women  earning  three  dollars  a  week 
working  fourteen  hours  a  day  in 
one  unhealthy  room  ?  In  them  the 
Christian  sees  Him,  hungry  and 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       in 

naked  and  in  prison,  and  if  he  shuts 
his  eyes  there  is  that  fierce  con- 
demnation of  those  who  said, 
"Lord!  Lord!"  and  went  on  en- 
joying their  wealth.  Perhaps  we 
do  not  pray  unctuously  and  live  on 
slum  rents;  we  have  not  crushed 
out  trade  rivals;  nor  said  in  our 
hearts  that  business  is  business; 
ours  may  not  be  the  life  which 
makes  men  hate  and  rail  at  the 
churches:  but  there  is  the  plain 
command  to  be  poor  in  spirit,  poor 
in  fact.  But  is  it  possible  while 
society  is  still  unchanged?  If  a 
man  has  children  and  divests  him- 
self of  the  means  to  provide  them 
jvith  a  reasonably  healthy  home 
and  the  best  education  he  can  af- 


ii2      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

ford,  he  sins,  surely,  against  his 
nearest  neighbour.  They  are  his 
to  care  for,  not  in  luxury;  but  he 
must  comfort  them  and  prepare 
their  spiritual  life  with  those  suf- 
ficient things  which  he  would  have 
all  men  enjoy.  Must  they  grow 
up  ignorant  and  narrow-minded, 
maimed,  halt,  blind?  That  would 
be  his  sin.  If  he  has  not  the  means, 
as  no  man  has,  of  giving  to  all  men 
what  is  best,  at  least  according  to 
his  power  he  must  do  his  duty  to 
the  few  of  his  own  household. 
That  indeed  is  less  that  the  perfect 
ideal  of  poverty:  to  some  it  may 
seem  like  consenting  to  evil ;  a  bow- 
ing down  in  the  house  of  Rimmon; 
like  being  content  with  less  than 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       113 

full  salvation.  But  is  not  this  the 
true  thought,  that  no  one  can  be 
perfectly  saved  alone;  that  we  can 
never  do  the  will  of  God  utterly 
until  it  is  done  everywhere  on  earth, 
as  in  heaven:  that  indeed  we  have 
no  right  to  be  over-concerned  that 
we  may  be  released  from  the  temp- 
tation of  the  world  until  the  same 
salvation  is  possible  to  all?  For 
men  are  one ;  we  stand  and  fall  to- 
gether ;  we  cannot  be  perfect  Chris- 
tians singly,  but  as  the  body  of 
Christ ;  and  until  the  whole  body  is 
perfect,  the  single  members  remain 
in  imperfection.  Few  of  us  can 
live  rightly  in  utter  poverty,  until 
society  is  changed.  But  meanwhile 
if  he  cannot  yet  be  poor  in  fact, 


ii4      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

delivered  altogether  from  the  temp- 
tation of  dying  things,  the  Chris- 
tian can  attain  the  spirit  of  poverty. 
He  has  no  excuse  for  luxury;  for 
preoccupation  in  money-making; 
for  blindness  towards  the  soul. 
And  he  has  no  excuse  for  forget- 
ting the  larger  duty.  It  must  be  al- 
ways upon  his  conscience ;  the  sense 
of  the  presence  and  pressure  of  the 
ideal,  though  it  seems  unfulfilled 
now.  He  has  to  make  it  possible, 
for  every  one,  some  day  soon. 

So  he  is  led  to  his  third,  and 
political  duty,  in  the  knowledge 
that  it  is  not  all  so  much  a  matter 
of  his  own  gain,  but  that  the  spirit 
of  Jesus  comes  as  a  social  salvation, 
not  of  one  nor  a  few,  but  of  society 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       115 

as  a  whole.  And  that  can  only 
be  by  political  action.  Parliament 
alone  can  set  up  the  common  wealth 
which  will  take  away  the  disabilities 
that  make  poverty  unholy  now,  and 
establish  mercy  in  business,  and 
neighbour-love.  The  Christian 
has  to  go  down  with  his  ideal  into 
the  political  fight. 

It  is  easy  to  say  hard  things  about 
party  politics  and  politicians,  and 
that  it  is  a  common  theme  is  a  good 
sign  of  general  repentance.  We 
are  growing  tired  of  politics  for 
party's  sake,  of  the  fire  without 
light  which  comforts  no  one  except 
those  who  receive  their  reward. 
Politics  are  becoming  more  real; 
less  oratorical ;  less  of  a  career,  and 


ii6      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

more  of  a  service:  and  with  the 
change  and  discounting  of  ambition 
the  personal  bitterness  decreases. 
Perhaps  we  still  wish  for  our 
opponents  a  gentler  heart,  or  a 
brighter  wit,  deliverance  from  in- 
vincible ignorance;  but  we  hardly 
think  of  them  as  personal  enemies. 
If  they  cannot  see  humanity  beyond 
patriotism,  they  are  still  patriots; 
if  they  do  not  see  the  soul  beyond 
material  prosperity,  the  larger  vi- 
sion may  yet  be  theirs.  The  only 
enemy  is  the  man  who  isolates  him- 
self in  self-interest,  who  breaks  up 
the  unity  of  men ;  who  is  not  a  bro- 
ther, but  a  traitor,  in  the  state. 
The  last  division  is  between  self- 
interest  and  love.  It  strikes  down 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       117 

to  the  root  of  good  and  evil.  Love 
and  pride  divide  heaven  from  hell ; 
and  here,  in  politics,  it  is  the  ulti- 
mate and  irreconcilable  division. 
One  seems  to  foresee  that  the  last 
battle,  the  political  Armageddon, 
will  be  fought  out  between  love  and 
pride.  But  among  those  that  have 
the  goodwill  there  is  room  for  the 
tolerance  of  many  temperaments, 
conservative,  liberal,  socialistic,  if 
at  least  they  all  pity  and  love. 

The  Christian's  immediate  test 
of  man  and  measures  political  is 
simple  then:  this  man  who  seeks 
my  vote,  is  he  with  us  or  against 
us?  We  do  not  ask  whether  his 
creed  is  ours,  nor  even  whether  he 
has  interpreted  the  mind  of  Jesus 


n8      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

as  we  did — that  would  be  very  well 
if  it  were  so — but  at  least  has  he 
pity  and  love?  Or  is  he  looking 
for  a  judgeship  or  a  senatorship, 
or  a  chance  of  sitting  at  the  dinner- 
tables  of  the  rich  and  powerful? 
Even  if  his  politics  seem  right  he  is 
not  for  us,  for  self-interest  in  the 
end  will  master  his  politics.  But 
how  whole-heartedly  could  we  fol- 
low the  strong,  practical  man,  who, 
seeing  the  two  worlds  as  Jesus  saw 
them  and  knowing  that  character 
in  the  people,  the  soul  which  sur- 
vives, is  the  object  of  all  well-being, 
said  so,  boldly,  and  asked  our  vote 
on  that  ground  only ;  the  man  whose 
religion  is  all  his  policy. 

So  with  the  measures  of  the  day. 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       119 

Do  they  run  with  the  thought  of 
Jesus?     Is  there  love  in  them  and 
pity  ?     Are  they  only  for  party  ad- 
vantage,   appealing   to    self-inter- 
est?    No  further  question  is  need- 
ed to  divide   right   from  wrong; 
and  when  between  two  good  meas- 
ures we  look  for  some  nearer  test, 
then  the  Christian's  last  ideal,  that 
personal   poverty   and   neighbour- 
love  made  perfect  and  real  in  a  com- 
monwealth, starts  up  to  try  which 
is  the  better.     If  in  the  words  of 
Jesus  we  have  found  the  implica- 
tion of  such  an  ultimate  society 
then  it  must  be  always  there,  the 
touchstone  of  all  things ;  of  a  new 
bill  or   the  latest   political  move. 
So  tried  by  a  constant  ideal,  politics 


120      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

become  easy;  the  Christian  knows 
what  he  wants;  what  Jesus  wants 
of  him. 

But  there  remains  this,  perhaps 
the  most  difficult  question  between 
the  Christian  and  his  politics.  Cer- 
tainly he  can  join  himself  to  an  ex- 
isting party,  and  there  is  always  a 
misfortune  in  multiplying  means; 
but  can  he  give  himself  whole- 
heartedly to  Conservatism,  or  Pro- 
gressivism,  or  Prohibitionism,  or 
Suffragism,  or  Socialism  ?  Do  they 
not  all,  in  one  vital  need,  fail  him? 
No  one  of  them  openly  and  frankly 
bases  its  programme  upon  a  spirit- 
ual hope;  and  those  to  whom  that 
hope  is  everything  can  never  be  at 
ease  until  they  have  taken  their 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       121 

stand  together  upon  the  true 
ground.  If  the  Christian  too  near- 
ly identifies  himself  with  other 
ideals;  if  he  finds  in  his  adopted 
party  no  expressed  and  open  Chris- 
tian bond,  nor  declaration  first  and 
foremost  of  a  more  logical  and 
practical  motive  than  any  desire 
satisfied  here,  he  may  forget  his 
ground,  or  come  to  neglect  it,  and 
so  fall  into  the  unreason  of  the 
world.  He  needs  a  fellowship,  not 
at  war  with  other  parties,  nor 
spoiled  by  party  spirit ;  ready  indeed 
always  to  join  with  others  in  com- 
mon purposes;  but  a  fellowship 
which  before  the  world  professes, 
in  its  politics,  a  faith  which  no 
other  party  has  yet  acknowledged. 


122      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

When  he  has  made  the  unworld- 
liness  of  Jesus  his  own,  and  turned 
the  world  upside  down,  and  car- 
ried its  centre  beyond  dying  things, 
has  wholly  abandoned,  as  he  must, 
all  other  perishable  hopes  and  let 
the  true  hope  invade  all  his 
thoughts,  no  lesser  faith  can  sat- 
isfy him.  Even  if  many  in  other 
parties  are  on  the  right  side,  still 
their  party  cries  are  not  unworldly : 
to  him  they  are  incomplete,  illog- 
ical, unsafe. 

Then,  again,  does  any  party  go 
to  the  length  of  the  Christian  ideal? 
Conservatism,  at  its  best,  means  the 
preservation  of  existing  order; 
slow  changes,  if  any.  It  is  afraid 
of  subversions.  How  do  we  know, 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       123 

it  says,  if  all  that  you  desire  comes 
to  pass,  that  men  will  be,  the  hap- 
pier? It  seems  to  lack  faith;  as 
though  better  days  were  unlikely 
and  man's  visions  were  delusive, 
not  inspired  of  God :  as  though  God 
had  given  up  the  lost  world:  as 
though  society  were  not  a  living, 
growing  thing,  but  a  mechanism  not 
to  be  tampered  with  lest  it  burst 
in  pieces.  Is  not  that  little  faith 
impossible  to  those  who  have  the 
sense  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
ready  to  break  out  into  the  world, 
if  men  were  willing?  Has  the  con- 
servative Christian  understood  how 
the  Spirit  of  God  moves  every- 
where, as  in  the  Church,  so  in  the 
world,  which,  in  its  discontents  and 


124      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

disorders,  groans  and  labours  to- 
wards a  new  creation? 

Liberal  thought  again,  though 
it  has  many  shades,  is  still  col- 
oured by  individualism.  Its 
scheme  is  liberty,  of  thought,  of  re- 
ligious belief,  of  commercial  en- 
terprise; and  it  has  the  true  credit 
of  having  overturned  many  tyran- 
nies. But  its  essential  concern  is 
for  the  rights  of  the  individual. 
It  defends  the  man  against  un- 
fair burdens;  against  the  land- 
lord, or  the  privileged  church  or 
class.  It  is  a  demand  for  justice 
— that  second-rate  virtue — the  eye 
for  an  eye,  the  tooth  for  a  tooth, 
which  Jesus  never  praised:  and 
perhaps,  with  some,  a  little  lack- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       125 

ing  in  imagination,  the  rights  of 
others,  or  the  overright  of  the 
community,  do  not  weigh  so  strong- 
ly in  the  balance  against  the  suf- 
fering they  have  themselves  borne. 
With  that  bias  of  mind  it  is  not 
always  easy  to  question  one's  own 
privileges,  the  right  to  the  power 
or  wealth  which  our  free  energy 
has  won  for  us.  The  admiration 
of  liberty  is  sometimes  hurt  by  the 
suggestion  of  the  greater  right  of 
the  community:  or  that  no  right 
must  ever  become  privilege ;  or  that 
society  may  interfere  with  a  man's 
business  or  personal  expenditure. 
It  begins  to  talk  about  grand- 
motherly legislation  or  govern- 
ment by  an  army  of  officials.  Per- 


126      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

haps  it  is  true  to  say  that  Liber- 
alism does  not  always  see  society 
as  one;  that  it  is  individualistic, 
imperfectly  communistic.  Again, 
it  has,  it  seems,  no  final  ideal. 
Here  and  there,  where  an  abuse  is 
urgent,  it  does  its  work;  but  not 
with  a  sure  purpose  towards  a  state 
of  society  which  it  long  ago  imag- 
ined and  is  always  working  for. 
It  is  opportunist;  therefore  random 
rather;  and  so  far  less  effectual 
than  a  further-sighted  policy  might 
be.  It  has  not  the  clear  vision 
which  saves  politics  from  by-ways. 
So  it  is,  perhaps  because  of  a 
sense  of  this  defect,  that  Liberal- 
ism shades  off  into  Socialism;  for 
the  socialist  knows  what  he  wants, 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       127 

he  has  a  theory  and  a  Utopia ;  and 
his  ideals  look  very  like  the  neigh- 
bour-love, expressed  in  community, 
which  we  believe  is  implied  in  our 
Lord's  teaching.  It  is  the  party 
which  tempts  many  Christians,  to 
which  many  profess  adhesion.  In 
practice  the  Christian  is  often  with 
the  socialist.  He  might  be  with 
him  whole-heartedly  but  for  the 
doubt  that  Socialism,  abroad  in 
Germany  and  France,  at  home  and 
in  English  -  speaking  countries, 
though  not  so  markedly,  is  materi- 
alistic, dislikes  religion,  perhaps  not 
unreasonably  because  so  often  the 
churches  seem  to  fight  for  privilege. 
If  it  had  a  new  knowledge  of  what 
Christianity  means  to  its  followers, 


128      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

if  it  were  captured  by  the  spiritual 
impulse,  it  might  yet  be,  it  may  be, 
a  political  expression  of  Christian- 
ity; and  if  a  Christian  may  do  a 
work  of  more  use  to-day  than  any 
other,  it  would  be  to  convince  the 
great  mass  of  Socialism  that  the 
one  thing  it  lacks  is  the  knowledge 
of  the  futility  of  materialistic 
hopes,  a  sense  of  God  and  the  soul, 
an  understanding  of  Jesus. 

Meanwhile  men  of  like  thoughts 
draw  together  and  begin  to  work 
together,  inevitably  if  the  principle 
which  binds  them  is  not  present  in 
its  purity  elsewhere.  Others  are 
not  against  them,  nor  yet  alto- 
gether on  their  side.  The  Church 
can  only  be  satisfied  with  its  own 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       129 

more  perfect  knowledge  of  what 
life  is.  In  that  knowledge  it  must 
have  a  policy  of  its  own.  It  should 
be  enough  for  a  man  to  say  that  he 
is  a  Christian  and  every  one  should 
know  his  politics ;  that  he  has  made 
the  mind  of  Jesus  his  own ;  His  su- 
preme concern  for  the  soul;  His 
ideals  of  personal  poverty — the 
freedom  from  the  desire  of  dying 
things ;  of  mercy  in  all  relations ;  of 
real  neighbour-love.  All  Chris- 
tians belong  to  the  Church  Mili- 
tant ;  not  yet,  perhaps,  with  a  single 
policy  and  ideal,  though  every  day 
one  sees  and  reads  the  signs  of 
awakening  purpose,  the  call  to 
service  from  many  quarters.  The 
Church,  with  the  driving  power  of 


130      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

faith,  can  in  the  end  have  no  rival. 
It  may  swallow  up  all  parties;  be 
the  one  great  party.  If  it  moves 
weakly  it  is  because  Christianity  is 
divided  and  has  not  yet  wholly  un- 
derstood, nor  accepted,  the  mind  of 
Jesus.  But  even  now  Christian 
principles  can  be  the  sole  politics  of 
a  growing  number.  Whatever 
their  present  parties,  they  have  a 
common  spirit  which  must  draw 
them  into  a  more  satisfying  fellow- 
ship. 


rx 

The  Church  and  the  World 

A  LAST  thought  remains, 
and  leads  back  to  the  be- 
ginning: Jesus  left  His  Church  in 
the  world,  but  is  she  there  only  to 
send  out  her  Christians  to  change 
the  world  into  the  image  of  her 
Lord's  ideal?  or  is  she  something 
more,  peculiar  and  unworldly? 
Has  she  not  a  larger  and  ultimate 
mission,  looking  beyond  the  world? 
While  we  are  gone  away  upon  the 
work  every  steeple  points  to  heaven, 
and  every  sound  of  singing  through 
open  doors  answers  the  old  ques- 
131 


132      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

tions,  whence  men  come  and 
whither  they  go,  why  they  suffer 
and  for  what  are  we  at  work. 

For  we  need  something  more  from 
the  Church  than  the  stimulus  to 
politics:  we  ask  for  an  unshakable 
reason  for  it  all.  Consider — it  is 
a  good  thing  to  stand  aside  or  be 
compelled  to  rest  for  a  time,  and  so 
as  the  quieted  mind  clears  to  find 
ourselves  asking  what  we  were  so 
busy  about,  the  last  question — if  all 
that  we  seek  were  realised,  what 
then?  If  our  Lord's  ideals  became 
realities,  in  some  future  age  when 
men  were  poor  and  merciful  and 
shared  together  all  good  things, 
what  then?  Sometimes  we  seem 
to  work  as  though  the  end  were 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS      133 

here;  but,  if  so,  the  ground  trem- 
bles under  our  feet.  Just  as  our 
own  life  is  meaningless  if  bodily 
death  ends  all,  and  our  struggling 
to  be  the  best  that  lies  in  us  would 
be  wasted  when  we  die,  so,  on  a 
greater  and  more  dreadful  scale, 
all  effort,  however  rightly  aimed, 
however  Christian,  to  better  man's 
state,  is  wasted  if  it  looks  for  an 
earthly  result,  because  the  Earth  is 
no  more  immortal  than  our  body. 

There  is  a  star  in  Orion  which 
seems  fainter,  vaguer,  than  its 
neighbours.  It  is  in  fact  a  nebula 
coiled  and  scattered  through  space 
vaster  by  far  than  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  solar  system.  They 
say  that  it  is  a  universe  in  birth. 


134      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

Out  of  such  a  cosmic  cloud  the  sun 
and  its  planets  were  formed. 
Through  time  so  long  as  to  be 
meaningless  to  thought  the  nebula 
contracted,  and  grew  hot,  and 
threw  off  stars,  lesser  or  greater, 
circling  about  the  central  sun.  Ac- 
cording to  their  mass  so  was  the 
life  of  the  stars.  The  Sun  is  still 
a  fire  immeasurably  hot :  the  planet 
Jupiter  is  still  cloud  and  vapour  not 
yet  become  solid.  But  the  Earth  is 
past  her  youth ;  long  ago  the  outer 
cold  froze  upon  her  surface,  and 
filled  her  shrunken  sides  with  seas, 
and  clothed  her  in  the  blue  mantle 
of  air.  Upon  her  breast  life  came 
up,  fish  and  bird  and  beast,  and 
man  last  of  all. 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS      135 

Her  old  age  and  death  are  fore- 
told in  the  nearer  skies.  The  as- 
teroids swimming  in  nameless  mul- 
titudes through  outworn  orbits  died 
long  ago  because  they  were  little. 
Mars  our  neighbour  is  very  old: 
already  his  seas  are  dried  up ;  there 
is  no  water  there  except  in  the  ice- 
caps of  the  poles ;  the  planet's  sur- 
face seems  a  dry  plain  of  red-brown 
sand.  Schiaparelli  and  Lowell 
have  thought  that  the  curious  lines, 
the  "canals"  they  called  them,  may 
be  tracks  of  harvest  fields  beside 
water-ways  led  down  across  the 
long  deserts  from  the  polar  ice.  If 
there  are  living  creatures  there, 
like  ourselves  perhaps  but  older, 
wiser — for  the  water-ways,  if  such 


136      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

they  are,  pass  unbroken  over  all 
their  world  as  though  universal 
peace  were  there — they  live  by  the 
summer  melting  of  the  polar  ice. 
But  the  ice  shrinks,  and  if  the  har- 
vests fail  their  end  is  not  far  away. 
Nearer  still  Earth's  death  is 
foretold.  The  Moon  is  without  air 
and  water,  cold  and  barren.  As 
she  is,  so  Earth  will  be.  The  cold 
of  space  will  chill  her  heart,  the 
water  fail,  the  atmosphere  shrink; 
and  man,  some  day  when  all  his 
labour  has  at  last  brought  happi- 
ness and  social  justice,  will  pass 
away  for  ever.  What  then  are  we 
working  for?  Is  our  fate,  not  a 
tragedy,  but  an  unspeakable  stupid- 
ity? 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       137 

Any  matter  seems  a  stupidity  if 
one  sees  only  half  of  it.  If  we  only 
know  this  world,  life  of  course  is 
foolishness.  But  when  we  see  it 
as  Jesus  did,  it  becomes  right  and 
reasonable;  for  He  said  that  there 
was  another  world,  beyond,  within, 
overshadowing  and  interpenetrat- 
ing the  dying  world,  a  life,  soul, 
spirit,  for  which  this  world  is. 
What  should  it  profit  a  man  if  he 
gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his 
soul  ?  What  shall  it  profit  human- 
ity if  they  make  the  dying  earth  a 
paradise  and  cast  away  their  imper- 
ishable part?  No  thought  which 
recognises  only  this  world  can  an- 
swer the  question  why  we  suffer 
and  why  we  work,  nor  escape  from 


138      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

the  dilemma  of  human  mortality. 
Only  when  with  Jesus  we  have  seen 
the  two  worlds  can  we  find  hope  in 
life  and  death,  man's  suffering  and 
trial,  and  the  ideals  which  drive  us 
to  work. 

What  did  He  say  about  suffering 
and  work?  God  is  our  Father,  in 
the  heavens,  of  another  plane  and 
order;  Spirit,  whose  children  we 
are.  And  as  children  He  deals 
with  us.  Ourselves,  if  we  are 
wise,  so  deal  with  our  sons  and 
daughters.  We  might  make  their 
life  perfectly  easy  and  painless;  if 
we  are  foolish,  wrap  them  away 
from  all  necessity  of  effort.  We 
might  give  them  all  that  they  want, 
as  some  say  God,  if  he  would, 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS      139 

might  give  us  all  we  have  not. 
But  we  should  condemn  ourselves 
if  we  so  dealt  with  our  own  chil- 
dren; so  spoilt  them;  without  inde- 
pendence, with  everything  done  for 
them,  and  every  trial  which  makes 
strong  character  kept  from  them, 
they  grow  up  poor  creatures. 
God,  in  His  wisdom  and  love,  is  no 
worse  father  than  we  are;  so  it  is 
that  He  does  not  do  everything  for 
us,  but  leaves  us  to  work  out  our 
salvation,  overcoming  by  our  own 
effort  and  increasing  knowledge 
the  diseases  of  the  body,  the  igno- 
rances of  the  mind,  the  social  in- 
iquities, which  are  indeed  troubles, 
but  stepping-stones  to  power  and 
character.  Out  of  his  trials  and  vie- 


140      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

tories  man  that  was  a  child  grows 
to  be  a  Son  of  God  knowing  good 
and  evil,  because  His  Father,  wise 
and  loving,  leaves  him  to  fight  his 
own  battles.  But  even  that  is  only 
half  the  truth,  for  the  Kingdom  in 
the  heavens,  the  spiritual  plane  and 
order,  enters  into  this  world,  is 
within  us,  and  in  it  we  are  com- 
forted in  sorrow,  strengthened  in 
work,  and  there  store  up  the  ever- 
lasting gain.  Our  outward  condi- 
tions are  but  the  school  of  the  soul; 
this  world  is  for  the  other,  body  for 
soul;  earth's  life  for  the  spiritual 
order.  Neither  is  any  sorrow  nor 
trial  more  than  we  can  bear.  Even 
if  we  die  of  it  We  do  not  die;  it  is 
only  that  the  old  half-blind  thought 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS      141 

that  death  is  the  end  of  all  things, 
still  deceives  us.  If  we  saw  it  as 
God  may,  as  the  opening  into  some- 
thing larger,  the  leaving  school,  an 
episode  in  life,  we  should  think  of 
it  with  gladness.  So,  as  Jesus  re- 
vealed Him,  God  is  our  Father; 
Earth  is  the  school  of  the  soul;  its 
sorrows  make  character ;  He  leaves 
us  to  fight  our  battles  for  our  own 
good;  He  comforts  our  spirit  and 
when  we  see  life  whole  we  may  un- 
derstand His  goodness,  whence  we 
come  and  whither  we  go,  why  man 
suffers.  And  why  we  work  to  bet- 
ter the  earthly  life,  are  politicians 
and  social  reformers?  Because 
the  better  the  school  the  better  the 
scholar :  the  stronger  the  body  and 


i42      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

mind  the  greater  the  opportunity 
of  spiritual  gain:  because  the  only 
justification  of  political  ideals  is 
that  they  make  character  and  soul. 
Other  justification  we  have  none: 
body  and  brain  perish,  the  world 
passes  away,  only  spiritual  gain  is 
worth  working  for. 

That  we  may  easily  forget  in  our 
business  with  politics,  and  it  is  to 
this  that  the  Church  is  witness. 
Though  she  sends  her  people  out  to 
work  and  change  society  she  has 
herself  a  larger  duty;  to  be  an  ever- 
lasting answer  to  the  reason  of 
work,  why  we  are  here,  why  we  do 
good. 

In  the  old  metaphor,  man's  soul 
passes  through  this  world  a  trav- 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       143 

eller  in  a  foreign  land.  If  any  set 
up  their  tent  in  a  pleasant  place,  or 
grow  weary,  the  Church  calls  to 
them:  This  is  not  your  rest;  here 
we  have  no  abiding  city:  and 
no  soul  that  understands  would 
wish  to  stay,  for  the  other  land  is 
much  better.  Though  Great-Heart 
makes  the  rough  places  smoother 
and  the  journey  easier,  it  is  not  that 
the  foreign  land  may  become  so 
pleasant  as  to  detain  the  travellers, 
but  that  they  may  be  hastened  on 
their  way.  The  way  will  always 
be  hard.  There  will  be  dark  val- 
leys where  some  one  vanished ;  long 
hills  where  the  heart  laboured; 
waste  places  and  dryness;  and 
friends  who  went  another  way. 


144      JESUS  AND  POLITICS 

But  every  traveller  who  reached 
the  end  went  home  the  manlier,  and 
made  the  path  more  plain  for 
others;  so  that  there  are  always 
more  who  go  down  confidently  to 
the  last  black  river  and  climb  out 
upon  the  other  side  at  the  foot  of 
the  shining  city.  And  as  they  go 
up  to  the  gate  they  know  why  they 
were  sent  on  that  journey,  because 
they  are  stronger  grown  through 
hardships  than  when  they  set  out. 
It  was  a  stern  and  rugged  place 
and  in  its  gloom  they  were  often 
near  to  forgetting  and  doubted  the 
King's  goodness,  but  now  it  is  all 
made  clear,  and  even  the  dark  river 
was  not  really  dreadful. 

What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he 


JESUS  AND  POLITICS       145 

lose  his  soul?  Blessed  are  the 
poor,  for  theirs  is  the  undying 
Kingdom.  He  healed  the  disabled 
and  evil-haunted.  He  would  have 
every  man  whole  and  sane,  and 
poor,  for  his  soul's  sake.  And 
blessed  are  mercy  and  neighbour- 
love.  Then,  His  will  is  not  done 
until  the  best  has  become  ours  and 
every  man's,  whatever  it  mean ;  un- 
til we  have  made  life's  good  a  com- 
mon wealth,  surrendering  our  priv- 
ilege, accepting  His  poverty.  To 
be  delivered  from  the  desire  of  dy- 
ing things ;  to  share  the  best  of  life 
with  all  men,  so  to  help  them  on  the 
way;  is  not  that  the  wisdom  not  of 
this  world? 

THE   END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA   LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE   ON   THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

Books  not  returned  on  time  are  subject  to  a  fine  of 
50c  per  volume  after  the  third  day  overdue,  increasing 
to  $1.00  per  volume  after  the  sixth  day.  Books  not  in 
demand  may  be  renewed  if  application  is  made  before 
expiration  of  loan  period. 


REC'D  LD 

MAR  i?  I960 

JUN291980 

REC.CIR.JUN4    -go 


50m-7.'16 


YB  2220: 


BR 

304094 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


